Portrait of Hadriaan Beverland Drawing a Sculpture of the Callipygian Venus

Portrait of Hadriaan Beverland Drawing a Sculpture of the Callipygian Venus

Isaac Beckett

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Satirical printmaking began in Britain around the time this mezzotint was made and the engraver, Beckett, was one of the first native-born masters of the medium. This image is doubly unusual since commissioned by the subject, a Dutch jurist and scholar, Haadrian Beverland whose licentious reputation is indicated by the fact he sketches a nude Venus surrounded by phallic-shaped obelisks. Beverland's controversial book on original sin, “De Peccato originali” (1678), had led to his expulsion from the University of Leiden and brief imprisonment. After moving to Utrecht, he received warnings for licentious behavior, then left for England in 1679, as secretary to the scholar Isaac Vossius. When this print was made, Beverland had joined the household of John Vaughan, 3rd Earl of Carbery. It suggests, that far from being cowed by his harsh treatment in Holland, he then used classical imagery to shape his repuation and promote the material he studied and wrote about.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Portrait of Hadriaan Beverland Drawing a Sculpture of the Callipygian VenusPortrait of Hadriaan Beverland Drawing a Sculpture of the Callipygian VenusPortrait of Hadriaan Beverland Drawing a Sculpture of the Callipygian VenusPortrait of Hadriaan Beverland Drawing a Sculpture of the Callipygian VenusPortrait of Hadriaan Beverland Drawing a Sculpture of the Callipygian Venus

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.