Saint Michael Fighting the Dragon, from The Apocalypse

Albrecht Dürer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

With the Apocalypse series, Dürer raised the medium of woodcut to the level of sophistication that engraving had achieved nearly three decades earlier. In this magnificent woodcut, Dürer used swelling and tapering lines to modulate areas of light and dark and to create a sense of space. High above a mountainous landscape, Christianity triumphs over evil as Saint Michael and his angels wage war in heaven against the seven- headed dragon.

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