Two Standing Male Figures

Two Standing Male Figures

Perino del Vaga (Pietro Buonaccorsi)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In his late works Perino evolved an increasingly mannered style given to demonstrations of effortless complexity, artifice, grace, and fanciful invention. These ponderous, artfully posed figures, lumbering yet vaporous, their impossibly tiny heads perched atop elongated and swollen bodies, are quintessential exemplars of a figure canon that proved immensely influential for subsequent artists working in Rome through the end of the sixteenth century. A very similar drawing by Perino representing two standing draped women, also from the collections of Peter Lely and William, Second Duke of Devonshire, belongs to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (inv. PD.33-1998, from the collection of the late John Gere.)

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Two Standing Male FiguresTwo Standing Male FiguresTwo Standing Male FiguresTwo Standing Male FiguresTwo Standing Male Figures

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.