Design for an Epitaph

Jean Lenfant

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Print with a design by the French sculptor Nicolas Blasset for a wall-mounted epitaph with a female bust and two pleurants in the shape of winged putti or angels. Various funerary monuments by Blasset have survived, but this design appears to be a generic model that could be appropriated for use by colleagues. In the center a large compartment is left clear where the inscription can be added, and below the compartment a blank shield indicates where a coat of arms could be placed. The print was acquired as part of a portfolio containing drawings and prints recording designs for funerary monuments and altars. While part of the drawings are sewn together in a quire, the group as a whole seems to have been compiled at a later date.

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