Orpheus and Eurydice

Orpheus and Eurydice

Marcantonio Raimondi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Marcantonio depicts the famed musician Orpheus (son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope) and his beloved Eurydice, who on their wedding day had been fatally bitten by a snake. The inconsolable groom descended to Hades, land of the dead, where his singing and lyre so charmed Pluto and Proserpina that he was allowed to lead Eurydice out of the Underworld. The moment shown may be when Eurydice, 'limping a little, from her late wound', as related by Ovid in his narrative poem 'Metamorphoses', was returned to Orpheus (Metamorphoses10.49).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Orpheus and EurydiceOrpheus and EurydiceOrpheus and EurydiceOrpheus and EurydiceOrpheus and Eurydice

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.