The Flagellation, from the Circular Passion

The Flagellation, from the Circular Passion

Lucas van Leyden

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lucas van Leyden is said to have designed the elegant, subtle prints in the Circular Passion as models for stained-glass makers. Small, domestic, stained glass-windows of the period were often round. Lucas gave the figure of the soldier at left an odd curved pose that reflects the shape of the print. He created the outer ring containing vines and putti from a separate printing plate that he used with all the images in the series. Lucas, the greatest sixteenth-century Netherlandish printmaker, created a scene at once full of movement and noise yet very still and contemplative.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Flagellation, from the Circular PassionThe Flagellation, from the Circular PassionThe Flagellation, from the Circular PassionThe Flagellation, from the Circular PassionThe Flagellation, from the Circular Passion

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.