Merry Joseph Blondel (1781–1853)

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ingres made this portrait of Merry Joseph Blondel, his fellow Prix de Rome winner, the year Blondel arrived in Rome. The Villa Medici, where the two artists resided and studied, appears in the background of the drawing. Although they trained with rival teachers—Blondel with Jean-Baptiste Regnault and Ingres with Jacques Louis David—and continued to compete for positions and honors throughout their careers, the two artists developed a lifelong friendship.

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