The Flight into Egypt

The Flight into Egypt

Hendrick Goudt

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Goudt's dark, rich night prints exercised a significant influence on Dutch printmakers of the Golden Age, including Hercules Segers and Rembrandt van Rijn. His seven engravings reproduce paintings by the German artist Adam Elsheimer. Goudt lived in Elsheimer's house in Rome from about 1604 to 1610. He may have been the German painter's student but was also an avid patron. He created some of the prints while in Rome and others after 1611 when he settled again in the Netherlands in the city of Utrecht. Goudt was equally skilled as a calligrapher and all of his engravings bear elegantly crafted inscriptions in their lower margins.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.