The Iliad of Homer, The Odyssey of Homer, Compositions from The Tragedies of Aeschylus, and The Theogony, Works and Days of Hesiod

The Iliad of Homer, The Odyssey of Homer, Compositions from The Tragedies of Aeschylus, and The Theogony, Works and Days of Hesiod

John Flaxman

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Before he arrived in Rome in 1787, Flaxman exhibited portraits and classical subjects in terracotta and plaster in London, and designed decorative reliefs for Josiah Wedgwood. During the seven years he spent in Italy, the sculptor developed a striking new style of outline drawing to illustrate famous poetic works by Homer and Aeschylus for private patrons, and the images were then engraved and published in Italy, France and Britain. Contemporaries saw these images as strikingly primitive, echoing the style of Greek vase painting, and well suited to archaic poetic subjects. Flaxman prefered to represent figures in profile, based furniture and costume on ancient sources, and used the open expanses of white paper to great psychological effect.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Iliad of Homer, The Odyssey of Homer, Compositions from The Tragedies of Aeschylus, and The Theogony, Works and Days of HesiodThe Iliad of Homer, The Odyssey of Homer, Compositions from The Tragedies of Aeschylus, and The Theogony, Works and Days of HesiodThe Iliad of Homer, The Odyssey of Homer, Compositions from The Tragedies of Aeschylus, and The Theogony, Works and Days of HesiodThe Iliad of Homer, The Odyssey of Homer, Compositions from The Tragedies of Aeschylus, and The Theogony, Works and Days of HesiodThe Iliad of Homer, The Odyssey of Homer, Compositions from The Tragedies of Aeschylus, and The Theogony, Works and Days of Hesiod

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.