Study for Geometry in “The Sorbonne"

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The youthful, pensive figure in this drawing stands as part of an allegory of geometry in one of Puvis’s great mural masterpieces: "The Sorbonne" (1887–89), which he painted in the newly rebuilt lecture hall of the University of Paris. The unfinished lower body indicates that Puvis had likely already decided on his placement behind a rock in the mural before he made the drawing of the model. Yet the pose appears reversed in the finished painting, suggesting that the artist may have flipped the tracing paper over as he transferred the design in a subsequent phase of developing the composition. A reduced-scale version of the mural (29.100.117), in which transfer gridlines are also visible, is on view in Gallery 800.

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