A Sunny Street at Tivoli

A Sunny Street at Tivoli

Thorald Læssøe

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Læssøe enrolled at the Royal Academy in 1834, but did not regularly attend classes; he is also known to have been tutored by Christen Købke for a short time. Living abroad in Rome, where he moved in 1844, Læssøe made drawings and paintings that demonstrate his passion for his adopted land. This wash drawing is a study of light and shade and shows a meticulously rendered, narrow and imperfect street in Tivoli, a town just outside Rome, baked by the sun.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Sunny Street at TivoliA Sunny Street at TivoliA Sunny Street at TivoliA Sunny Street at TivoliA Sunny Street at Tivoli

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.