The Siesta

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A young Roman woman dressed in a striped tunic plays a two-reeded flute, her feet near a table on which rests a basket and roses. Four men lie behind her on cushions under windows, listening or dozing, with a view of a temple in the distance. The print is based on an oil on panel painting of 1873 (Opus CXII). In the latter, the girl wears an elaborate apparatus around her head to support the flute; this is simplified in the print to a cap attached to a cloth over her mouth.

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