The Golden Age

Auguste Rodin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Although Rodin rarely made drawings with this level of finish in preparation for his sculptural projects, the staging of the figural group on a pedestal-like platform suggests a close relationship with sculpture. It is similar in style to the decorative sculptures he made in the 1870s while working in the Paris and Brussels studios of Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse. The title refers to the first of the successive ages of humanity according to Greek mythology—a time of youthfulness and harmony in contrast to the violent Age of Bronze, the subject of Rodin’s first important full-length sculpture.

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