Standing Saint John the Baptist with The Lamb

Standing Saint John the Baptist with The Lamb

Girolamo Macchietti

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A proponent of study after the live model, Girolamo Macchietti formed part of the reform movement in Florentine painting during the third quarter of the sixteenth century; most of his graphic production consists of figure drawings. This exquisitely tonal drawing in a "red-on-red technique" (red chalk on paper-washed ochre), which is typical for the artist, depicts Saint John the Baptist with his frequent attribute of the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) at his feet at left. The figure was, without doubt, based on a young male assistant posing in the workshop, and, as in the final painting, his face and anatomy were made to look older and more ascetic. This drawing was a final study for the figure at right in Macchietti's Tabernacle of the Sacrament in the church of San Michele at Pontorme (near Empoli) in the province of Florence. The sheet is squared for proportional enlargement to the final painting surface, and follows the execution of another drawing for the same figure of Saint John the Baptist now the Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. 1283). The tabernacle project dates to 1575-76, the period following Macchietti's fifteen-month sojourn in France. (Carmen C. Bambach)

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Standing Saint John the Baptist with The LambStanding Saint John the Baptist with The LambStanding Saint John the Baptist with The LambStanding Saint John the Baptist with The LambStanding Saint John the Baptist with The Lamb

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.