Hercules and Cacus, after Annibale Carracci, and the Destruction of Enceladus, after Agostino Carracci

Hercules and Cacus, after Annibale Carracci, and the Destruction of Enceladus, after Agostino Carracci

Jean Honoré Fragonard

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Directly following his study at the French Academy in Rome, Fragonard traveled in Italy making sketches after Italian artworks for the abbé de Saint-Non, who later had them etched in reverse in his "Recueil de Griffonis." Here Fragonard copied frescoes painted by Annibale and Agostino Carracci over fireplaces in adjacent rooms in the Palazzo Sampieri-Talon, Bologna. The attributions recorded in Fragonard's inscriptions have been reversed by modern scholarship.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hercules and Cacus, after Annibale Carracci, and the Destruction of Enceladus, after Agostino CarracciHercules and Cacus, after Annibale Carracci, and the Destruction of Enceladus, after Agostino CarracciHercules and Cacus, after Annibale Carracci, and the Destruction of Enceladus, after Agostino CarracciHercules and Cacus, after Annibale Carracci, and the Destruction of Enceladus, after Agostino CarracciHercules and Cacus, after Annibale Carracci, and the Destruction of Enceladus, after Agostino Carracci

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.