The Annunciation

Correggio (Antonio Allegri)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This exquisite small sheet is a preparatory study for the severely damaged fresco originally painted for the Church of San Francesco, Parma (now in the Galleria Nazionale, Parma). The drawing is highly worked in a rich mixture of media with the topmost layer in thick white gouache, anticipating the brilliant lighting and color of the fresco. The sheet is squared and, though small, may have been the final design, in which the painter (and perhaps his patrons) would have been able to visualize much of the final result on the wall. This and other sheets by Correggio in the same technique are perhaps the most painterly drawings made in Italy during this period. Correggio made a few changes between the drawing and the fresco: the number of angles is brought up to four and the burst of light behind the Virgin is still more extensive. Both fresco and drawing have generally been dated to 1522-25.

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