Harpocrates, the God of Silence
Jan Muller
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Jan Muller uses an undulating line and a calibrated balance of light and dark to create this mysterious portrait of Harpocrates, the Greek god of silence, secrets and confidentiality. His white headdress shines out of the dark background as he raises his forefinger to his lips in the universal sign for silence. The Latin inscription in the border above his head repeats his admonition. Three years later, in 1596, Muller engraved a portrait of the philosopher Chilon (accession no. 51.501.6335). Both prints are larger than life and presented in oval frames, almost as if seen through windows into a deeper space. Muller most probably intended the two engravings as a pair, or as the first two prints in a never completed series of portraits from antiquity. In style and subject matter, Harpocrates and Chilon derive from "fantasy portraits" by Hendrick Goltzius – the foremost Mannerist printmaker, to whom Muller may have been apprenticed -- and his school. They were pen drawings of historical or mythological figures, rendered in bold strokes mimicking the swelling and tapering lines of engravings. Here Muller has taken this mannerist predilection for blurring the lines between different media a step further, by creating engravings that emulate drawings that imitate engravings.
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.