The Delphic Sibyl, from "Prophets and Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel"

The Delphic Sibyl, from "Prophets and Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel"

Giorgio Ghisi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

As explained by Boorsch (in Boorsch, Lewis and Lewis 1985, p. 164) the dates of 1540 and 1549 engraved on some of the plates from the series is false. The plates should rather be dated to the early 1570s.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Delphic Sibyl, from "Prophets and Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel"The Delphic Sibyl, from "Prophets and Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel"The Delphic Sibyl, from "Prophets and Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel"The Delphic Sibyl, from "Prophets and Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel"The Delphic Sibyl, from "Prophets and Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel"

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.