Insects, Butterflies, and a Dragonfly

Jan van Kessel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jan van Kessel produced numerous studies of plants and animals and distinguished himself from his predecessors in this field through his emphasis upon the depiction and aesthetic arrangement of insects. The artist likely drew from prints and from life when drawing the array of insects on this sheet. He occasionally painted insects like these on the drawer fronts of the cabinets that insect collectors used for display. The jarring juxtaposition of Van Kessel’s animate painted insects with the dried and pinned specimens contained within the drawers that his depictions decorated would have surprised and delighted those privileged enough to have had access to the elite spaces in which these collections were housed.

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