View of the Colosseum

Richard Wilson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Wilson traveled to Italy in 1750 to seek portrait commissions from British aristocrats on the Grand Tour but soon turned exclusively to landscape. This delicate sketch shows part of the Roman Colosseum, an ancient amphitheater built in 72-80CE, with the ruins of the Baths of Titus in the background. The tentative nature of the lines and the pentimenti, for example in the arcades of the Colosseum, suggest that this view was taken on the spot.

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