Callot figures; a well-dressed dwarf man to left declaring his love to an old dwarf woman to left, a dwarf man playing the guitar and a dwarf woman dancing with a tambourine to right, from Six grotesques (Six pièces de figures grotesques)

Callot figures; a well-dressed dwarf man to left declaring his love to an old dwarf woman to left, a dwarf man playing the guitar and a dwarf woman dancing with a tambourine to right, from Six grotesques (Six pièces de figures grotesques)

Agostino Mitelli II

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Agostino Mitelli, the son of the well-known printmaker Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, had a brief career as a printmaker in Bologna. This prints is part of set of six etchings after Stefano della Bella that represent a type of caricature that was very popular in the seventeenth century. Here, several dwarf-like figures play musical instruments while striking exaggerated poses. Captions running along the bottom of the prints add to the humor of the works by identifying the figures and their relationships. In the uppermost print, the scene of a man playing a guitar to a woman holding a hearing horn is described as “beauties unheard.” In the lower print, the man standing confidently in the middle is described as the “great bandy-legged corporal.” Such characters also appeared in Italian theater and would have been recognized by those who bought these prints.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Callot figures; a well-dressed dwarf man to left declaring his love to an old dwarf woman to left, a dwarf man playing the guitar and a dwarf woman dancing with a tambourine to right, from Six grotesques (Six pièces de figures grotesques)Callot figures; a well-dressed dwarf man to left declaring his love to an old dwarf woman to left, a dwarf man playing the guitar and a dwarf woman dancing with a tambourine to right, from Six grotesques (Six pièces de figures grotesques)Callot figures; a well-dressed dwarf man to left declaring his love to an old dwarf woman to left, a dwarf man playing the guitar and a dwarf woman dancing with a tambourine to right, from Six grotesques (Six pièces de figures grotesques)Callot figures; a well-dressed dwarf man to left declaring his love to an old dwarf woman to left, a dwarf man playing the guitar and a dwarf woman dancing with a tambourine to right, from Six grotesques (Six pièces de figures grotesques)Callot figures; a well-dressed dwarf man to left declaring his love to an old dwarf woman to left, a dwarf man playing the guitar and a dwarf woman dancing with a tambourine to right, from Six grotesques (Six pièces de figures grotesques)

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.