Origin of the Greek Vase

Origin of the Greek Vase

Auguste Rodin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In a 1911 interview, Rodin described his discovery of this pose during a session with a model. He spoke of recognizing in her form "a vase with exquisite curves, the amphora which contains the life of the future within." Rodin was keenly interested in antique vases—he amassed a collection of more than six thousand vases of ancient, medieval, and Asian origin. The "vase-woman" became a recurring motif in his drawings during the first decade of the twentieth century.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.