Studies of a Stag

Stefano da Verona (Stefano di Giovanni d'Arbosio di Francia)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

These sensitive renderings of a stag can be attributed to Stefano da Verona, a leading painter and draftsman in Lombardy and the Veneto. Another pen-and-ink drawing by his hand appears in this exhibition. In Stefano’s time, artists in northern Italy were known for their precise depictions of nature; the model books they produced featured highly finished animal studies with exacting attention to outward detail. Stefano’s nimble sketches of a stag stand in contrast to this tradition. With free and rapid strokes of the pen, he experiments with the immediate impression of the creature, imbuing it with a sense of vitality. The spontaneous handling, rhythmic hatching, and looped lines are among the characteristics these works share with the other sheet by Stefano in this selection.

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