Ruins of the Colosseum

Joseph Benoît Suvée

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Born in Bruges, Suvée completed his artistic training in Paris, where in 1771 he won the Prix de Rome, beating out a young Jacques Louis David, five years his junior. As a student at the Académie de France in Rome, he made this accomplished study of the sun-drenched ruins of the Colosseum. In both technique and conception, it echoes the landscape drawings of his predecessors, artists such as Hubert Robert who saw antiquity as a source of picturesque motifs and an inspiration for reverie.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art