Putti in Clouds, Supporting a Globe

Jan Thomas

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jan Thomas (also known as Jan Thomas van Yperen, or Ieperen) appears to have been a member of Rubens’s workshop in the 1630s before joining the Antwerp painter’s guild in 1639/1640 and, in the mid-1650s, leaving Flanders first for Germany and then for Vienna, where he continued his career as a history painter and portraitist. The present drawing of putti holding a globe of some kind—a common allegorical motif, usually expressive of triumph—is likely a study for a painting. Undulating contour lines of varied weight and thickness convey the fleshy but weightless bodies of the putti. Long strokes of pen and brush indicate rays of light.

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