Dido's Sacrifice to Juno

Jean Bernard Restout

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Despite being born into a dynasty of successful painters, Restout had a troubled relationship with the institutions that controlled the arts under the Bourbon monarchy. It was out of deference to his family’s standing, perhaps, that he was awarded a commission in 1772 for a series of tapestry designs based on Virgil’s Aeneid. In this sketch for one of the panels, Restout’s anticipation of the Neoclassical style is evident in the antique motifs and austere palette. After the Revolution, he would align himself with Jacques Louis David’s efforts to dismantle the structures of privilege and hierarchy that governed the Académie.

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