The First Course–The Dinner

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A young Roman woman holds a wine cup and stands next to a young man who reclines on a dias as an older man drinks at right. Men dressed in dark togas with wreaths around their heads enter at left. The print is based on a lost oil on panel painting (Opus CCXII, dated January 29, 1880).

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