Dream of Aeneas: Aeneas rests his head on his hands atop his shield, while the river god Tiber leans on a vessel and points upward with his left hand

Dream of Aeneas: Aeneas rests his head on his hands atop his shield, while the river god Tiber leans on a vessel and points upward with his left hand

Salvator Rosa

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum's painted version of Salvator Rosa's 'Dream of Aeneas' (65.118) may have preceded this etching, but in the print Rosa altered nearly most of the details clearly wanted to achieve a very different effect. The artist drew his inspiration from Virgil's Aeneid (8.26–65), in which the weary hero, having finally reached Italy and about to enter into war with Turnus, falls asleep on the bank of the Tiber. The god of the stream appears to him, offering advice and foretelling his future as the founder of the Roman race.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dream of Aeneas: Aeneas rests his head on his hands atop his shield, while the river god Tiber leans on a vessel and points upward with his left handDream of Aeneas: Aeneas rests his head on his hands atop his shield, while the river god Tiber leans on a vessel and points upward with his left handDream of Aeneas: Aeneas rests his head on his hands atop his shield, while the river god Tiber leans on a vessel and points upward with his left handDream of Aeneas: Aeneas rests his head on his hands atop his shield, while the river god Tiber leans on a vessel and points upward with his left handDream of Aeneas: Aeneas rests his head on his hands atop his shield, while the river god Tiber leans on a vessel and points upward with his left hand

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.