The Crucifixion

Giuseppe Salviati (Giuseppe Porta, called Il Salviati)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The artist Giuseppe Salviati had been a student of the famed Mannerist Francesco Salviati (1510-1563), from whom he took his name, replacing "Porta." Giuseppe designed and quite possibly cut the block for this signed woodcut, which may be related to his painting of the same subject once in the Palazzo Ducale, Venice. On June 30, 1556, Giovanni Ostaus was granted the privilege to publish both this woodcut, which was initially issued with surrounding text, and a needlework pattern book, for which the Lucretia, displayed nearby, served as a frontispiece.

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