Allegory of a thesis, two women hold inscribed tablets

Allegory of a thesis, two women hold inscribed tablets

Bartolomeo Coriolano

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This graphically powerful woodcut is the product of Reni and Coriolano’s collaborative explorations of chiaroscuro printing in Bologna in the 1630s. The print’s largely indecipherable iconography illustrates how enigmatic thesis print images can be when separated from their original accompanying texts. Two women surrounded by books hold inscribed tablets that together make the phrase "All is the same that harms the innocent."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Allegory of a thesis, two women hold inscribed tabletsAllegory of a thesis, two women hold inscribed tabletsAllegory of a thesis, two women hold inscribed tabletsAllegory of a thesis, two women hold inscribed tabletsAllegory of a thesis, two women hold inscribed tablets

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.