The procession of Silenus who is carried on an ass preceeded by a bacchant playing the cymbals and other figures

The procession of Silenus who is carried on an ass preceeded by a bacchant playing the cymbals and other figures

Agostino Veneziano (Agostino dei Musi)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Veneziano had arrived in Rome by 1516 and begun to work with Marcantonio Raimondi and Marco Dente da Ravenna, engraving the drawings of Raphael and his students. This print is probably based on a design by Raphael or Giulio Romano. Most of the figures in the composition—including the drunken Silenus, the dancing Pan, and the maenad —are free adaptations from an ancient Roman sarcophagus that during the sixteenth century was in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore.


Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The procession of Silenus who is carried on an ass preceeded by a bacchant playing the cymbals and other figuresThe procession of Silenus who is carried on an ass preceeded by a bacchant playing the cymbals and other figuresThe procession of Silenus who is carried on an ass preceeded by a bacchant playing the cymbals and other figuresThe procession of Silenus who is carried on an ass preceeded by a bacchant playing the cymbals and other figuresThe procession of Silenus who is carried on an ass preceeded by a bacchant playing the cymbals and other figures

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.