The Family of Cain

Peter Oliver

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Peter Oliver, the leading miniature painter at the court of Charles I, established his reputation with a series of small watercolor copies after old master paintings in the collections of the king and his nobles. "The Family of Cain" reproduces a painting by Paolo Veronese (Museo del Prado, Madrid) presumably in England at that time. No finished watercolor version of this preparatory study is known, but extensive color notes on the back of the sheet suggest that such a work was planned. The assured, softly rendered forms typify Oliver's mature style, with his early, linear manner tempered by close study of Venetian art. The Old Testament subject concerns Cain who has murdered his brother Abel, and now lives as a fugitive with his wife and infant son Enoch in the Land of Nod, east of Eden (Genesis 4.15-17).

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