Job Reproved by His Friends

James Barry

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Job sits on the ground with his hands clasped, resigned to suffering, as lightning strikes his distant house and the bodies of his sons are borne away. As Job’s wife points toward heaven, friends have gathered to offer advice, including Elihu (the young man standing at left), Liphaz, Bildad, and Zophar (seated on the ground). One of Barry’s most dramatic aquatints and his most impressive biblical composition, the image encapsulates the aesthetic concept of the Sublime as formulated by Barry’s mentor and patron, the philosopher Edmund Burke. In a famous treatise from 1757, Burke, to whom the print is dedicated, presents the noble suffering and elemental violence in the story of Job as exemplifying the "boundless magnitude of God’s overwhelming power."

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