The Young David Playing the Harp

The Young David Playing the Harp

Michelangelo Anselmi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Delicately rendered in black chalk, this drawing constitutes a study for the figure of the Young David playing the harp frescoed by Michelangelo Anselmi in monochrome on the entrance arch of the western apse of the church of Santa Maria della Steccata in Parma. The placement of the figure, seated in a niche rounded at the top and bottom, is directly inspired by the same motif in Parmigianino's unfinished decoration in the vault of the eastern apse of the Steccata, a project documented in a celebrated double-sided sheet in the Metropolitan Museum collection (inv. 62.135). Anselmi was, in fact, one of the artists commissioned in 1548 to continue the decoration of the church after Parmigianino's disgrace and death in 1540. Though his formal dependence on Parmigianino's example is evident, Anselmi’s style as a draughtsman is here strikingly different in its soft pictorial ‘chiaroscuro’ shading. (FR)

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Young David Playing the HarpThe Young David Playing the HarpThe Young David Playing the HarpThe Young David Playing the HarpThe Young David Playing the Harp

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.