Marius at Minturnae

François-Xavier Fabre

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Neoclassical painter and collector, whose bequest formed the foundation of the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, Fabre began his career in the studio of Jacques Louis David and continued his studies in Rome. Royalist sympathies led him to take up residence in Florence in 1793, where he remained for much of his career. This aquatint illustrates an episode from Plutarch's Lives where the Roman general Marius fled Rome, after being exiled by his enemies in the Senate, only to be captured outside the town of Minturnae, where local authorities ordered him to be executed. Fabre depicts the confrontation between the imprisoned former general Marius and the Cimbrian soldier sent to execute him. Although they were on opposite sides of the political divide during the revolutionary years, both Fabre and his former teacher were drawn to the theme of the noble prisoner.

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