The Virgin and Child Resting Outside a City Gate

The Virgin and Child Resting Outside a City Gate

Annibale Carracci

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Formerly owned by the great French collectors Pierre Crozat and Pierre-Jean Mariette, this composition by Annibale Carracci reveals still the sweet-faced female types inspired by Correggio (c. 1489-1534) and emulated by his cousin Ludovico Carracci, as well as their interest in a treatment of light that pulsates with movement. A drawing probably to be dated in the early 1580's, the artist here worked up the figures in the foreground with deep tone and a fairly calligraphic use of haching. He suggested the buildings in the background with an atmospheric sketchiness that seems noteworthy also for the economy of its strokes. The Virgin sits on the ground in a position of humility. As has been suggested, Annibale's composition may have been based on an engraving of the Virgin in a Courtyard by the German artist Martin Schongauer (c. 1435/50-1491), in which Mary sits on the ground before walls that converge at right angles behind her.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Virgin and Child Resting Outside a City GateThe Virgin and Child Resting Outside a City GateThe Virgin and Child Resting Outside a City GateThe Virgin and Child Resting Outside a City GateThe Virgin and Child Resting Outside a City Gate

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.