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. The left portrait depicts a woman in profile facing right. She is wearing a blue corseted bodice with a white fichu and beige/grey gloves. She has a white ruffled hat decorated with pink roses, purple and yellow feathers, and a veil at the back. The portrait on the right is of a woman in profile facing left. She wears a yellow dress with a white fichu. She has a yellow hat with pink roses along the brim, as well as a blue ribbon, and green feathers. She holds a brown fur muff. In between the two roundels is a small ink sketch of flowers and a feather.

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.