The Chamber Idyll

The Chamber Idyll

Edward Calvert

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A pastoral love scene framed by the rustic structure of a cottage. Within a low room, a nude youth sits on the edge of a bed next to a standing woman who garment both remove. A bowl filled with fruit sits on the floor and a shepherd's crook leans at left while, at right there is a landscape with a star-filled sky and sheep and an ox standing near the cottage.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.