Comedy and Tragedy

Anne Louis Girodet-Trioson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

After his coronation in 1804, Napoleon remodeled former royal residences all across France. He commissioned Girodet to rework the apartments at the Château de Compiègne. This drawing is for a border of the library ceiling. It incorporates major figures of French literature—Molière, Racine, and Corneille—as stone busts in whimsical juxtaposition to the Greek muses of comedy (Thalia) and tragedy (Melpomene), envisioned as children to align this scene with the rest of the design, which presents pairs of allegorical putti. The sinuous outline and subtle modeling of Girodet’s distinctive technique in black chalk produce a trompe l’oeil effect suggesting marble statuary.

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