The Calumny of Apelles

Giorgio Ghisi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This proof demonstrates Ghisi’s working method as he translated a complex drawing of a classical scene by the artist Luca Penni on to the engraving plate. Much of the composition has been engraved, but several areas are drawn in pen and a grid remains over the lower right quadrant. Twelve of Ghisi’s proof impressions have survived, and this sheet belonged to the English artist Sir Peter Lely in the seventeenth century.

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