Two Women Annointing the Wounds of Saint Sebastian (recto); Study of a Nude Male Figure (verso)

Two Women Annointing the Wounds of Saint Sebastian (recto); Study of a Nude Male Figure (verso)

Giovanni Biliverti

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bilivert was the most successful pupil of the Florentine master Cigoli (1559-1613). Following several years in Rome, Bilivert returned to his native Florence, where he worked under the patronage of Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici and enjoyed a prosperous career. Drawn in ink over black chalk, this animated sheet depicts the third-century Roman soldier Sebastian after he was tied to a tree and shot full of arrows. His abandoned armor can be seen in the foreground, and his wounds are tended to by Irene and her maid. Though the sheet is squared for transfer, no known painting of the subject by the artist survives; perhaps it was preparatory for a now-lost painting in a Florentine collection recorded by the seventeenth-century biographer Filippo Baldinucci.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Two Women Annointing the Wounds of Saint Sebastian (recto); Study of a Nude Male Figure (verso)Two Women Annointing the Wounds of Saint Sebastian (recto); Study of a Nude Male Figure (verso)Two Women Annointing the Wounds of Saint Sebastian (recto); Study of a Nude Male Figure (verso)Two Women Annointing the Wounds of Saint Sebastian (recto); Study of a Nude Male Figure (verso)Two Women Annointing the Wounds of Saint Sebastian (recto); Study of a Nude Male Figure (verso)

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.