An Academy of Painters

Pierfrancesco Alberti

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Prints representing academy scenes became more common after the first official art academy was established in Florence in 1563. At the Rome venue depicted here, masters (with beards and hats) instruct young artists. The masters teach the principles of disegno, which entails both the ability to render a drawing and the intellectual capacity to conceive its design. One master displays a sheet of sketches to two students at left, while another gives a lesson on geometry in the center. In the background on the right, a group examines a cadaver to learn about anatomy. The paintings and pieces of sculpture that adorn the back wall served as additional aids for the students.

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