The Cumaean Sibyl (after Michelangelo)

Jean Robert Ango

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Little is known about Ango, who was a French draftsman active in Rome in the 1760s. He befriended many young art students at the French Academy in Rome, although not himself a pensionnaire. He most likely earned a living by making red-chalk copies of works by his friends and of paintings in local collections and churches. On this sheet, he copied not a whole composition, but two separate motifs from the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The image on the upper part of the sheet shows the pendentive featuring the Cumaean sibyl, one of the five female prophets depicted on the ceiling. The sketch below is of one of the triangular spandrels, which contain family groups of the ancestors of Christ.

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