Head of a Bearded Man Wearing a Hood in Profile Facing Left

Cavaliere d'Arpino (Giuseppe Cesari)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A late, very characteristic and powerful head study by the gifted Cavaliere d'Arpino, a consumate draftsman and the last great exponent of Roman Mannerism, this sheet marks a new addition to the artist’s rare catalogue of pen drawings. Executed in large scale, this expressive head study of a bearded man in profile wearing a heavy hood was identified by Herwarth Röttgen (2002) as the head of a Roman priest seen at right in Arpino’s ‘Numa Pompilio Instituting the Cult of the Vestal Virgins’, frescoed at the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, in 1636-38. The design, however, recurs in other works by the artist, like in that of the Benedictine monk in the right background of the Arpino's ‘Pietà’ in the Abbey of Montecassino of 1616. (F.R.)

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