Methamorphoseos vulgare

Ovid

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The first illustrated Italian edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses was published in Venice in 1497 and translated a Latin paraphrase of the fourteenth century. It had many reprintings, often, as in the case of this 1501 edition, with the same late fifteenth-century woodcuts. This scene depicts the skilled metalworker Vulcan who, alerted by the all-seeing sun to his wife's infidelity, trapped Venus and Mars in an invisible metal net. Once the lovers were caught, Vulcan called the other Olympians to mock them. Mercury said he would gladly suffer embarrassment to trade places with Mars.

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