Venus Surrounded by Putti

Arthur Pond

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pond made a number of prints for a large project entitled "Prints in Imitation of Drawings" which publicised private collections of Old Master drawings. Employing a variety of subtle techniques he carefully replicated a range of media and support. Here using a combination of intaglio and relief techniques he reproduced a pen-and-ink drawing, with white heightening, on blue paper by the seventeenth-century Italian artist Parmigianino who was widely admired in eighteenth-century Britain. The lettering on the print indicates that Pond reproduced a drawing then in the collection of Sir Anthony Wescombe.

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