The Clemency of Augustus (recto); Knight Restraining a Female Figure (verso)

François André Vincent

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vincent’s pen-and-ink lines vibrate with an elegant muscularity in this compositional study for his 1787 painting The Clemency of Augustus. Like his contemporary Jacques Louis David, Vincent worked out the compositions of his history paintings by first drawing the figures nude. The declamatory poses of the figures reflect their dramatic pedigree, as the artist here depicts the concluding scene of Pierre Corneille’s 1641 play, Cinna.

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