Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione

Henri Dubouchet

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dubouchet's meticulous engraving reproduces a celebrated sixteenth-century portrait of the author and ambassador Castiglione by his friend Raphael in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. In 1869, the engraver, who made a number of prints after the Italian Renaissance artist, solicited a commission from the Chalcographie du Louvre to create this work. Founded at the end of the eighteenth century, the Chalcographie's mission was to assure the diffusion of works of art by copper engraving. During the Second Empire (1852–70), it was particularly active in commissioning engravings after the masterpieces in the Louvre's collection. Prints after Raphael were especially popular as he was held up as an artistic paradigm throughout the nineteenth century.

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