Seated Apostles and Putti

Giovanni Lanfranco

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

One of Lanfranco's major commissions in Naples were the frescoes painted in 1637-38 on the rib-vault of the nave in the church of the Certosa di San Martino. In the circular compartments along the center of the vault, Lanfranco painted Christ appearing in a glory of angels, and in the triangular compartments above the windows groups of apostles, prophets, sibyls, and putti. Walter Vitzthum identified in this drawing a scheme for one of these triangular compartments. The broad-based triangular composition takes into consideration the whole area to be painted, while the faint red chalk indications of a narrower triangle suggest the area of the steeply rising vault that would be visible to the viewer standing directly below. Not only are Lanfranco's cloud-seated figures in this drawing, as in the fresco, strikingly Correggesque, but the handling of the red chalk reveals as well Lanfranco's early Emilian traning. Two drawings for a first overall scheme for the Certosa vault were identified by Hermann Voss in the Teylers Museum at Haarlem.

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