Horses

Parmigianino (Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Previously assigned to a seventeenth-century Italian artist, Francesco Allegrini, the sheet has been reattributed, based on stylistic considerations, to a major artist who lived more than a century earlier. The handling of the pen and the anatomical type of the horses are entirely characteristic of Parmigianino. Parmigianino's experience with the etcher's needle -he was among the first Italian artists to make etchings - led to a very controlled, incisive use of pen in his late drawings, especially those he made after he returned to Parma around 1530. This late technique is nicely exemplified by the Museum's sheet. Parmigianino is best known for his Mannerist imagery, in particular, his fantastic elongations: a horse with an unusually long neck in one of his pictures was mistakenly described in an old inventory as a giraffe. A prolific draftsman, he also drew after life, as seems to have been the case with the present study.

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