Two Costume Designs or Portrait Types

Two Costume Designs or Portrait Types

Anonymous, French, 18th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Page with two round portraits painted in red tones. The left portrait shows a woman gazing towards the left. She wears a corseted dress with a fichu tucked into her bodice. In her arms she holds a fur muff with a bow. She has a large bonnet with feathers, bows. The woman in the right portrait is turned towards the right but looks over her shoulder in the direction of the viewer. She wears a fur stole around her neck and has a tall hat with feathers, leaves, and a veil attached to the back. In between the two round portraits are graphite sketches of three shoes with buckles and ribbons.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Two Costume Designs or Portrait TypesTwo Costume Designs or Portrait TypesTwo Costume Designs or Portrait TypesTwo Costume Designs or Portrait TypesTwo Costume Designs or Portrait Types

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.