Cloister of the Certosa di San Martino, Naples

Louis Jean Desprez

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This drawing came to the museum in 1961 with an attribution to the architect Jean Augustin Renard based on an inscription on the back of the sheet. As pointed out by Petra Lamers in 1995, however, the composition corresponds to an engraving featured in the abbé de Saint Non's Voyage pittoresque which bears an inscription noting that the model for the print was drawn by Louis Jean Desprez, as were many other prints in the same publication.

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