Andromache and Astyanax

Andromache and Astyanax

Pierre Paul Prud'hon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Didot initially commissioned Prud'hon to design the frontispiece to The Works of Racine (1801–5) and five illustrations to the play Andromache. This design for Act 2 depicts the heroine embracing her son Astyanax and exclaiming that she still sees her dead husband in his features ("It is you, dear husband, whom I embrace"). This illustration was never published by Didot since the commission for Andromache was ultimately given to Girodet. However, Prud'hon used this drawing as the basis for the painting Andromache and Astyanax, which is in the Metropolitan's collection (25.110.14).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Andromache and AstyanaxAndromache and AstyanaxAndromache and AstyanaxAndromache and AstyanaxAndromache and Astyanax

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.