A Woman Distributing Bread from a Basket: Study for "Feed the Hungry," in the Chapel of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy (Les Oeuvres de Miséricorde), Church of Saint-Eustache, Paris

A Woman Distributing Bread from a Basket: Study for "Feed the Hungry," in the Chapel of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy (Les Oeuvres de Miséricorde), Church of Saint-Eustache, Paris

Victor-François-Eloi Biennourry

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

With a sympathetic gaze, this figure extends a hand offering a loaf of bread, an embodiment of feeding the hungry, one of the seven works of mercy that Biennourry was commissioned to paint with fellow Prix de Rome winner Eugène Damery (1823–1853) for a chapel in the Church of Saint-Eustache in Paris. This was the artist’s third major religious commission after successfully completing decorations for the Parisian churches of Saint-Roch and Saint-Séverin. The restoration and redecoration of Saint-Eustache from 1842 to 1860 involved more than twenty academic painters, though many, such as Biennourry, are little known today.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Woman Distributing Bread from a Basket: Study for "Feed the Hungry," in the Chapel of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy (Les Oeuvres de Miséricorde), Church of Saint-Eustache, ParisA Woman Distributing Bread from a Basket: Study for "Feed the Hungry," in the Chapel of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy (Les Oeuvres de Miséricorde), Church of Saint-Eustache, ParisA Woman Distributing Bread from a Basket: Study for "Feed the Hungry," in the Chapel of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy (Les Oeuvres de Miséricorde), Church of Saint-Eustache, ParisA Woman Distributing Bread from a Basket: Study for "Feed the Hungry," in the Chapel of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy (Les Oeuvres de Miséricorde), Church of Saint-Eustache, ParisA Woman Distributing Bread from a Basket: Study for "Feed the Hungry," in the Chapel of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy (Les Oeuvres de Miséricorde), Church of Saint-Eustache, Paris

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.