Apollo and Diana

Jacopo de' Barbari

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this print Apollo is shown in his role as a solar deity, standing on top of a celestial sphere firing arrows that signify the rays of the sun. The image shows the moment when night, symbolized by Apollo's sister Diana, goddess of the moon, gives way to day. Devoted to the hunt, the chaste Diana (the Greek Artemis) is accompanied by a deer. It was through engravings like this, with its idealized nude figures, that Barbari influenced artists throughout Europe, including the German Albrecht Dürer.

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