Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist

Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist

Francesco Bartolozzi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The child Jesus sits on the Virgin's lap, holding a bird and looking at the young St. John the Baptist who offers a banner on his cross. In the 1760s, Bartolozzi produced a series of etchings on Guercino drawings in the British Royal Collection. These were reissued in the 1790s by John Boydell, but the lack of text here indicates that it was produced at the earlier date.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Madonna and Child with St. John the BaptistMadonna and Child with St. John the BaptistMadonna and Child with St. John the BaptistMadonna and Child with St. John the BaptistMadonna and Child with St. John the Baptist

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.