Saint Cajetan of Thiene Holding the Infant Jesus

Saint Cajetan of Thiene Holding the Infant Jesus

Gaetano Gherardo Zompini

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

On Christmas Eve in 1517 Saint Cajetan (Gaetano Thiene, Italian, 1480-1547) had a vision in which the Blessed Virgin offered him the Christ Child. Cajetan is here identified by his attribute, a branch of lilies, and by the high-collared habit of the Theatine order, of which he was one of the founders. Possibly executed in preparation for an engraving, this highly finished sheet was attributed to Gaetano Zompini by an annotation of the so-called "Reliable Venetian Hand": these inscriptions, in neat, slanting letters, giving the artist's name and place of origin, are the work of a still-unidentified Venetian collector of the eighteenth century. Attributions to Gaetano Zompini in the "Reliable Venetian Hand" appear on five drawings, all similar in style to the present example (Bettagno, 1966, nos. 118, 120-122, 183), including the "Chirst Giving the Keys to St. Peter" in the Witt Collection, Courtauld Institute, London (no. 4120); "Aeneas Carrying his Father from Burning Troy" in the British Museum, London (no. 1927, 0112.2), and the "Virgin and Child Appearing to Saint Anthony of Padua" in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (no. 22116).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Saint Cajetan of Thiene Holding the Infant JesusSaint Cajetan of Thiene Holding the Infant JesusSaint Cajetan of Thiene Holding the Infant JesusSaint Cajetan of Thiene Holding the Infant JesusSaint Cajetan of Thiene Holding the Infant Jesus

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.