Saint Jerome in the Wilderness

Saint Jerome in the Wilderness

Annibale Carracci

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Annibale Carracci was one of the most important artists working in Italy during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Together with his cousin Ludovico and his brother Agostino, he played a critical role in what has been labelled 'the reform of painting'. While the corpus of Annibale's prints is small (twenty-two known designs can be securely attributed to him), they were influential and illustrate the aesthetic aims to combine northern Italian naturalism with central Italian principles of design (known as disegno). Trained to use the burin by his brother Agostino, a professional engraver, Annibale soon turned to etching, a technique that allowed him to emulate the quick, fluid pen strokes of his drawings. Here the immediacy of the medium contributes to the expressive intensity of the representatoin of Saint Jerome, who, in the midst of his self-mortification, experiences a divine vision.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.