The Angel with the Key to Bottomless Pit

The Angel with the Key to Bottomless Pit

Albrecht Dürer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Here, Dürer shows the end to the reign of the Devil as told in book twenty of Revelation. The angel seized the dragon, who is Satan, and "bound him for a thousand years. And he threw him into the Abyss, shut it, and sealed it over him, so that he could not deceive the nations until the thousand years were complete . . . Then [he] saw the thrones, and those seated on them had been given authority to judge . . . those who had not worshiped the beast or its image, and had not received its mark on their foreheads or hands. And they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Angel with the Key to Bottomless PitThe Angel with the Key to Bottomless PitThe Angel with the Key to Bottomless PitThe Angel with the Key to Bottomless PitThe Angel with the Key to Bottomless Pit

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.