The Tempest, Act I: Ferdinand and Miranda

Samuel Middiman

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

On a rocky shore, Miranda catches sight of Ferdinand for the first time. Her father Prospero stands beside his daughter as the spirit Ariel plays a lyre, and the disgruntled Caliban watches at left. Cipriani and Barret's conception of this famous scene from Shakespeare's "Tempest" emphasizes the dramatic coastline in keeping with an established Franco-Italian tradition of landscape painting. The oval shape and small figures suggest a work conceived as part of a decorative scheme in a grand house, the sort of thing that Cipriani often worked on for architects such as Robert Adam.

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