Songs of Innocence: Frontispiece

William Blake

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This frontispiece to Songs of Innocence illustrates Blake's "Introduction," a poem that casts the poet as a wandering piper inspired by the vision of a divine child: Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me "Pipe a song about a Lamb!" So I piped with merry cheer . . . "Piper, sit thee down and write In a book, that all may read." So he vanished from my sight; And I plucked a hollow reed, And I made a rural pen, And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear.

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