Amorini Celebrate the Rape of Proserpine

Francesco Rosaspina

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rosaspina believed that he could translate the color and style of a painting only if the work was in front of him as he engraved, which is one reason it took him so long to complete this, his most famous print. Because there were long intervals between his visits to Milan, where Albani's painting was located, several proofs in different stages of completion survive. Albani's famous painting of dancing cupids, now in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, is based on Ovid's account of Proserpina's ravishment by Pluto (the Greek Hades). See 45.78.123 for the finished state.

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