Two Seated Italian Women with a Baby in a Cradle

Kristian Zahrtmann

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

From 1885 to 1908, Zahrtmann was one of the leading teachers at Copenhagen’s Kunstnernes Frie Studieskoler (Free Arts Schools), founded in the early 1880s as an alternative to the Royal Danish Academy. In the summers he traveled to Italy, eventually establishing a small artists’ colony in Civita d’Antino, a mountain town in the central region of Abruzzo. In this highly finished charcoal drawing—signed and dated by the artist—the models wear traditional clothing of the area. The mother and child gaze toward one another, transcending their physical separation in the composition.

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