Pentedatelo, Calabria, Italy

Edward Lear

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lear made this drawing on a trip through southern Italy in 1847. His diary records that on July 30, he arrived, “at an elevated plateau whence the whole 'Toe of Italy' is finely discernible, a sea of undulating lines of varied forms down to the Mediterranean; a few towns glittered here and there, and towering over the southern extremity of land, a high cluster or rocks, the wild crags of Pentedátelo, particularly arrested our attention." From a villa surrounded by a grape arbor and melon patch we look toward a distant cluster of jagged peaks (the Pentedatelo, or Pentedattilo, a geological formation that resembles five fingers). The watercolor's original colors have faded significantly, but the work remains a useful record of Lear's journey.

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