Saint Christopher Bearing the Christ Child

Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone (Giovanni Antonio de Sacchis)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This pictorial 'chiaroscuro' study is Pordenone's finished drawing for the Saint Christopher he painted on one of the two shutters of a cupboard for ecclesiastical silver in Saint Rocco, Venice, about 1527 (Cohen, 1980, fig- 44). The sheet is squared for its proportional transfer onto the larger canvas. An old copy of this drawing is in the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento (Master Drawings from Sacramento, Sacramento, California, 1971, no. 11, repr., as Pordenone), which once figured in the collection of Baron Vivant Denon and was reproduced in reverse in Denon's "Monuments", vol. 2, pl. 124. At the Musée Condé in Chantilly there is a red chalk study for the figures of Saint Martin and the beggar represented on the other shutter in Saint Rocco (Cohen 1980, figs. 41 and 42). Together with other Venetian drawings in the Museum's collection, the sheet comes from the prestigious collection of John B. Skippe (1742-1812).

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