Sir Henry Spelman (Henricus Spelmannus Eques Auratus)

Sir Henry Spelman (Henricus Spelmannus Eques Auratus)

William Faithorne the Elder

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Faithorne is remembered as the most skilled native-born English engraver of the seventeenth-century. He was apprenticed to the print-seller William Peake (the son of James I's court painter Robert Peake) but probably trained by John Payne. In the English Civil War, Faithorne served as a royalist ensign, was imprisoned after the fall of the garrison at Basing House, then fled to France, where he gained extensive additional connections and experience. Back in London by 1652, he was appointed copper engraver to the king after the Restoration of 1660. This example of his work was made during the latter period and represents the antiquarian, historian and philologist Sir Henry Spelman.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sir Henry Spelman (Henricus Spelmannus Eques Auratus)Sir Henry Spelman (Henricus Spelmannus Eques Auratus)Sir Henry Spelman (Henricus Spelmannus Eques Auratus)Sir Henry Spelman (Henricus Spelmannus Eques Auratus)Sir Henry Spelman (Henricus Spelmannus Eques Auratus)

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.