Design for the Decoration of a Ceiling

Charles de la Fosse

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

La Fosse was one of the most important French decorative painters in the generation following Charles Le Brun (French, 1619–1690). He created ceilings and paintings for churches, palaces, and many royal residences, including the Palace of Versailles. His training included an unusually long three-year stint in Venice, which influenced his warm painterly style. This freely worked study for a ceiling has not been connected with a specific commission; it may have been either unexecuted or created for a building which has since been destroyed. The roughly sketched central field suggests airborne mythological figures, perhaps representing the apotheosis of a female deity.

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