Boy Holding a Sword, Standing near a Table in an Interior; verso: Various Sketches of Figures and Ornamental Forms

Anonymous, Dutch, 17th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In a simple interior, a boy wearing an ample cloak stands near a chair and table, holding a sword and looking tensely at the viewer. Through the doorway in the left background, a sculpted bust on a wooden pedestal is visible. The drawing is a somewhat unusual example of the kind of genre scenes produced by numerous mid-seventeenth-century Dutch artists, depicting the young boy in a role usually reserved for a gentleman or soldier, and lending a slightly eerie character to the scene. The author of the drawing has not yet been identified; one of the monograms on the verso may offer a clue. The former attribution to Anthonie Palamedesz. (1601–1673), known for his interior scenes with soldiers, cannot longer be upheld, as is clear from a comparison with, for instance, a figure study by that artist in the Museum’s collection (acc. 2000.22).

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