The life of the man who works well and the other badly ('vida del hombre obrando bien y obrando mal') 1859

The life of the man who works well and the other badly ('vida del hombre obrando bien y obrando mal') 1859

José María Marés

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

19th-century broadsheet with 48 rectangular scenes divided in two parts. The top 24 show the life of a man who reaps the fruits of his good conduct in life, while the 24 scenes below show the consequences of bad conduct. All scenes are accompanied by two short descriptive lines that rhyme.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The life of the man who works well and the other badly ('vida del hombre obrando bien y obrando mal') 1859The life of the man who works well and the other badly ('vida del hombre obrando bien y obrando mal') 1859The life of the man who works well and the other badly ('vida del hombre obrando bien y obrando mal') 1859The life of the man who works well and the other badly ('vida del hombre obrando bien y obrando mal') 1859The life of the man who works well and the other badly ('vida del hombre obrando bien y obrando mal') 1859

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.