Cave of Pan, near Sunium, Greece

Simone Pomardi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In 1801 the Irish archeologist Edward Dodwell hired the Italian painter Simone Pomardi to accompany him to Greece. Their purpose was, "to explore [the country's] antiquities, to compare its past with its present state, and to leave nothing unnoticed, which, to the classical reader, can be an object of interest, or a source of delight." This drawing of a cave at Sunium records geological features and ancient sculptures, the latter including a male figure holding a hammer near the back wall, and a headless statue below the entrance. Turbaned Turks, representatives of the rulers of Greece at this period, acts as guards. Dodwell and Pomardi worked individually and together to create important visual records of major sites, and this image was etched to illustrate Dodswell's "A Classical and topographical tour through Greece during the years 1801, 1805 and 1806," published in London in 1819.

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