Madame Alexandre Lethière and Her Daughter Letizia

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ingres became close with the Lethière family while in Rome. Guillaume Guillon Lethière—the father-in-law and grandfather of the sitters in this work—was director of the French Academy there from 1807 to 1816. Rosa Meli was fifteen when she married his son, Alexandre Lethière, and she gave birth to their daughter the following year. In the drawing, she appears self-possessed as she gazes directly outward while propping the infant Letizia against her knee. Ingres’s refined neoclassical style and graphite technique contribute to the serene quality of the double portrait.

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