Study of Hands

Study of Hands

Charles Joseph Natoire

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This delicate study of hands is a rarity in Natoire’s oeuvre as he painted portraits only occasionally. This drawing is a study for a self-portrait that was commissioned by the Grand Duke of Tuscany for his famous gallery of artists’s self-portraits. In the painting, Natoire holds a porte-crayon in his right hand and displays his cordon de Saint-Michel in his left. It is rare, also, to find such a study on a large un-cut sheet of paper.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.