Mary, Queen of Scots (frontispiece, from "De vita et rebus gestis... principis Mariae Scotorum reginae, Franciae dotariae, quae scriptis tradidere autores sedecim...," volume 1)

George Vertue

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Frontispiece to the first of two volumes by Samuel Jebb on Mary, Queen of Scots, published in 1725 with Latin, French and Spanish translations. The print was also used in "The History of the Life and Reign of Mary Queen of Scots," published anonymously by Jebb later that same year (hence discrepancies with Labanoff 156 and O'Donoghue 196.100, which both give the inscription "From an original painting of Frederico Zucchero."). After the Carlton portrait, previously attributed to Federico Zuccaro. The portrait is no longer believed to depict Mary, Queen of Scots, although the woman in the Carlton painting has not yet been identified.

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