Study for "Divine Justice"

James Barry

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This drawing reproduces figures from the center of Barry’s painting Elysium and Tartarus (1777–83), which hangs in the Great Room of the Society of Arts, London, and celebrates "those great and good men of all ages and nations, who were cultivators and benefactors of mankind." At top, patrons of the arts include Trajan, Titus, Peter the Great, Henry IV of France, Andrea Doria of Genoa, Scipio Africanus, Cosimo de’ Medici, Alexander the Great, Louis XIV, and Pope Julius II. At center, the theologians Origen, Pascal, Bossuet, Antoine Arnauld, and Bishop Butler converse with angels. Below, the sublime form of Divine Justice tilts her scales toward the abyss to suggest that evil has generally prevailed over good in history.

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