Vision of the True Cross appearing to St. Helen

Vision of the True Cross appearing to St. Helen

William Young Ottley

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Saint Helen, mother of Emperor Constantine, is seated on a low cushioned stool and looking toward a cross enveloped in light. This compositional study illustrates the discovery of relics related to Christ’s Crucifixion. Ottley is remembered as a scholar and a connoisseur, but he was also an accomplished artist, living in Italy from 1791 to 1799 and carefully recording fresco cycles by Giotto and other masters. He certainly knew Renaissance renditions of the Legend of the True Cross; the present drawing is not a copy but an imaginative rethinking of the subject. In style and treatment of anatomy it recalls drawings at the British Museum, where Ottley served as keeper of prints and drawings, and the dynamic pose is indebted to representations of the ancestors of Christ on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vision of the True Cross appearing to St. HelenVision of the True Cross appearing to St. HelenVision of the True Cross appearing to St. HelenVision of the True Cross appearing to St. HelenVision of the True Cross appearing to St. Helen

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.