A Standing Angel and two Cherubs

Federico Zuccaro (Zuccari)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lively drawn with pen and ink, brush, brown wash and highlighted with white gouache, this drawing by Federico Zuccaro was possibly conceived for the figure of the Angel that appears at the upper left of his altarpiece with ‘The Coronation of the Virgin with the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence’ in the Roman church of San Lorenzo in Damaso (ca. 1566). This connection was first proposed by John Gere, while the attribution of the drawing to Zuccaro is due to Jacob Bean (Curatorial Files, April 1962). Right after its acquisition in 1887, the sheet was published as a work by Fra Angelico in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Handbook of 1895 (no. 697). (F.R.)

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