Chef des Eunuques (head of the Eunuchs), from the series "Caravane du Sultan à la Mecque..." (Caravan of a Sultan Going to Mecca)

Chef des Eunuques (head of the Eunuchs), from the series "Caravane du Sultan à la Mecque..." (Caravan of a Sultan Going to Mecca)

Joseph Marie Vien

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In eighteenth-century France, the most promising young　painters, sculptors, and architects were awarded fellowships to study in Rome. It was a tradition among these students, known as pensionnaires, to stage an elaborate procession during Carnival. In 1748, the theme "A Caravan of the Sultan to Mecca" was proposed by Vien. The pensionnaires dressed in elaborate homemade costumes and adopted the roles of various members of the Ottoman court. Individual figures were then drawn and etched by Vien in a suite of prints that mimicked the tradition of costume-book plates. Certain students took on female personas while others, as seen for example in this print entitled Head of the Eunuchs, apparently used makeup to suggest a dark skin color.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Chef des Eunuques (head of the Eunuchs), from the series "Caravane du Sultan à la Mecque..." (Caravan of a Sultan Going to Mecca)Chef des Eunuques (head of the Eunuchs), from the series "Caravane du Sultan à la Mecque..." (Caravan of a Sultan Going to Mecca)Chef des Eunuques (head of the Eunuchs), from the series "Caravane du Sultan à la Mecque..." (Caravan of a Sultan Going to Mecca)Chef des Eunuques (head of the Eunuchs), from the series "Caravane du Sultan à la Mecque..." (Caravan of a Sultan Going to Mecca)Chef des Eunuques (head of the Eunuchs), from the series "Caravane du Sultan à la Mecque..." (Caravan of a Sultan Going to Mecca)

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.