William Shakespeare

Martin Droeshout the Younger

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A watermark in the paper used for this print ("MICHALET") tells us that it is a nineteenth-century reproduction of Doeshout's famous portrait engraving. Made originally to embellish the title page of the First Folio (1623), the image portrays Shakespeare with a prominent forehead, long hair covering his ears, a mustache and mouche (patch of hair below his lower lip). He wears a starched white collar, and a doublet adorned with lace or braid and fastened with covered buttons. Since the original image was approved by actor friends of Shakespeare, who edited the 1623 publication, and accompanied by a laudatory verse written another contemporary, Ben Jonson, it is considered a good likeness.

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