The Surviving Horatian

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Danish painter Eckersberg spent a year in Paris (1811–12) at the studio of Jacques Louis David, where he completed his training as a history painter. This drawing offers a coda to David’s celebrated painting of 1784–85, "The Oath of the Horatii," as it depicts the sole survivor of the legendary Roman battle between the Horatii and the Curatii triplets. The surviving Horatian sheathes his sword after mercilessly killing his sister for weeping over the death of her fiancé, one of the slain Curatians. The drawing’s precise contour lines and restrained use of wash are exemplary of Eckersberg’s early Neoclassical style.

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