William Shakespeare

George Vertue

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In a series devoted to poets, the engraver and antiquary Vertue based this image on the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, a painting with a good claim to be a lifetime representation, once owned by the Duke of Chandos, at now the National Portrait Gallery, London. The sitter’s doublet has here been enhanced with small darts, and the image set within a simulated stone frame crowned with laurels over a pedestal inscribed with an ode. The engraver researched his subjects carefully and produced hundreds of prints representing people who contributed to British history and culture.

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