Joseph Carreras

John Faber, the Younger

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Based on a Kneller portrait of 1686, this mezzotint portrays a Spanish poet and cleric who served as chaplain to Catherine of Braganza, the dowager queen of Charles II. The related painting hung in the Common Parlour at Houghton, was bought by Catherine the Great in 1779 and sold in 1854 by Tsar Nicholas I. Lady Sybil Cholmondely reaquired it for Houghton in 1975, the only work from the 1779 group that the family have managed to reaquire. After her husband's death in 1685, Catherine remained in Englahd through the reign of James II, and even after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 placed William and Mary on the throne. She lived at Somerset House and pursued a protracted financial dispute with her former Lord Chamberlain, Herny Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon. As a devout Roman Catholic, Catherine's desire for a large household of co-believers resulted in growing friction and she returned to her native Portugal in 1692.

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