Rinaldo and Armida

Giovanni Baglione

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

An old, much damaged, but possibly autograph replica of this drawing by Baglione is in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. 2840). The Louvre drawing is a study, with minor variations, for Baglione's ceiling fresco in the Casino dell'Aurora, Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, Rome, for which the artist was paid in 1614 (repr. Bollettino d'Arte, vol. 39, 1954, p. 319, fig. 13). Baglione himself describes the subject of the fresco as "la favola d'Armida, quando trovò Rinaldo addormentato, e sopra il suo incantato Carro il riposo" (Baglione, 1642, p. 403).

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