Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, Pointing to her Children as her Most Precious Ornaments

Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, Pointing to her Children as her Most Precious Ornaments

Gillis Mostaert the Elder

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In response to the matronly guest seated between two men who shows off a ring from her jewel box, Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, points to her children, returning from school, as her most precious ornaments. The choice of subject, taken from the first-century Roman writer Valerius Maximus (“Memorable doings and sayings”, introduction to book 4, chapter 4) and rarely depicted before, is indicative of the humanist culture that spread among Netherlandish artists in the course of the sixteenth century. This is especially true of Antwerp, where the author of the drawing, Gillis Mostaert, was active as a genre and landscape painter. The attribution is based on a stylistic comparison with one of the rare signed sheets by him in the Frits Lugt Collection, Paris. The purpose of the Museum's drawing is unknown, but the relatively cursory style indicates it was preparatory to another work, perhaps a painting.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, Pointing to her Children as her Most Precious OrnamentsCornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, Pointing to her Children as her Most Precious OrnamentsCornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, Pointing to her Children as her Most Precious OrnamentsCornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, Pointing to her Children as her Most Precious OrnamentsCornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, Pointing to her Children as her Most Precious Ornaments

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.