The Archangel Gabriel Kneeling to the Right; Small Study of Head at Lower Left.

Jacopo da Empoli (Jacopo Chimenti)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This monumental, evocative study of the archangel Gabriel genuflecting was intended for the composition of an Annunciation and seems to be based on a life model, presumably an assistant in the artist's workshop. The figure is fully dressed and the wings were rapidly sketched. The self-confident manner of drawing, with emphatic, elegantly rhythmic contours and a chiseled articulation of planes within, is typical of the artist, as is the pictorial treatment of the chalk on the ochre brown ground. The drawing appears to date from 1599-1609, the time of the artist's major altarpieces of the Annunciation at the church of San Faustino in Pontedera and at the Strozzi Chapel in the church of Santa Trinita in Florence. (Carmen C. Bambach)

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