Head of a Man in Three-Quarter Profile

Frans Crabbe van Espleghem

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This riveting engraving of an African is one of the rare depictions, if not the only one, of a black man as an independent subject in Northern European fifteenth and sixteenth-century art. Most likely not a portrait, the figure has a generalized character; he may have been intended to represent the African king from the Biblical scene of the Adoration of the Magi, often represented at this time as an African figure with a long jeweled earring. Characteristic of Crabbe's prints is his experimentation with ways of expressing tones and textures with the printed line. Here he contrasted the varied shades of the figure's dark skin, delineated with concentric lines that encircle the eye, with the many little curls of the hair. This is the only impression known of this print.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art