Miranda (Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2)

Miranda (Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2)

Caroline Watson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The teenage Miranda, raised on a desert isle by her magician-father Prospero, here catches sight of the ship-wrecked youth Ferdinand and is dumbfounded by his beauty. Pine's related painting was shown in April 1782 at the Great Room, Spring Gardens with six other subjects from Shakespeare, with plans announced for related engravings "in the chalk manner," by Caroline Watson and Victor Marie Picot. When Pine departed for America, Boydell bought the plates and reissued this version of the print in 1784.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Miranda (Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2)Miranda (Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2)Miranda (Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2)Miranda (Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2)Miranda (Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2)

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.