Portrait of Giovanni Baptista Belzoni, half-length, an Egyptian landscape below with pyramids and temples and statues including the head and arm of Amenhotep III

Portrait of Giovanni Baptista Belzoni, half-length, an Egyptian landscape below with pyramids and temples and statues including the head and arm of Amenhotep III

M. Fabroni

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A posthumous portrait of Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1788-1823), the celebrated Egyptologist of the nineteenth century. Belzoni made many important contributions to the field in his own time, including the discovery of the Nineteenth dynasty tomb of Seti I, located in the Valley of Kings near Thebes, around 1820. In one of the first attempts ever to move large Egyptian artifacts out of context, he successfully transported a large obelisk from Philae to Alexandria in 1819.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Portrait of Giovanni Baptista Belzoni, half-length, an Egyptian landscape below with pyramids and temples and statues including the head and arm of Amenhotep IIIPortrait of Giovanni Baptista Belzoni, half-length, an Egyptian landscape below with pyramids and temples and statues including the head and arm of Amenhotep IIIPortrait of Giovanni Baptista Belzoni, half-length, an Egyptian landscape below with pyramids and temples and statues including the head and arm of Amenhotep IIIPortrait of Giovanni Baptista Belzoni, half-length, an Egyptian landscape below with pyramids and temples and statues including the head and arm of Amenhotep IIIPortrait of Giovanni Baptista Belzoni, half-length, an Egyptian landscape below with pyramids and temples and statues including the head and arm of Amenhotep III

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.