Scene of Military Life: A General Giving Orders

Charles Parrocel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Parrocel, like his father before him, specialized in paintings of battles and hunts. His adept handling of such subjects endeared him to Louis XV, an avid hunter, leading to many royal commissions. This drawing is a study for a painting executed in 1744 for the appartement du dauphin at Versailles, made at the time of the Dauphin's first marriage to Marie-Thérèse of Spain. The shaped surround indicates the boiserie, or ornamental carved wood, that embellished the walls of the room for which the painting was destined.

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