Cymon and Iphigenia

James Gillray

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gillray here parodies a tale found in Boccaccio's Decameron and Dryden's Fables. While walking in the countryside, Cymon, a "fool of nature," encounters the sleeping Iphigenia, whose beauty provokes his exaggerated delight. Unlike the maiden of those stories, Gillray's sleeper is no elegant beauty. Nor is there any indication that love will reform her admirer's brutish character. Indeed, Cymon's lecherous expression suggests the opposite. The artist likely intended a political message, using Iphigenia's dark skin and African features to refer to contemporary debate over the slave trade. In 1796, the British Parliament voted down a bill to outlaw the trade and, since Gillray's Cymon is shown about to succumb to his baser instincts, the image likely criticizes Britain's politicians for doing the same.

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