The Punishment of the Arrogant Niobe by Diana and Apollo

Pierre Charles Jombert

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This lushly painted, highly colored study is for Jombert’s canvas (Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts, Paris) depicting the Greek mythological figure Niobe, who boasted with such hubris of her great fortune to be the mother of seven daughters and seven sons that it compelled the deities Diana and Apollo to assail her children with arrows. The sketch and the painting won Jombert first prize at the prix de Rome in 1772, for which he was awarded three years of study in Rome. Although he was considered an extremely promising student, little is known of Jombert after his return to France in 1776.

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