Charles II

Wenceslaus Hollar

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The future Charles II is portrayed as a youth, three-quarter length, wearing flat lace-edged collar, coat and sword, gloves. He leans on a baton and holds a hat. Behind is a view of the Banqueting House, Whitehall. Based on an earlier painting by Van Dyck, the print was published in 1649, following the execution of Charles I, when the subject was nineteen and leading Royalist troops in the English Civil War. He would only be crowned (and officially assume the titles recorded here in the engraved text below the image) in 1660, following the Commonwealth, and Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell.

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