William Shakespeare (formerly known as)

Richard Earlom

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Engraved as a frontispiece for Charles Jennens's 1770 edition of "King Lear," this engraving is based on a painting once attributed to Cornelius Johnson (or Janssen), believed in the nineteenth-century to represent Shakespeare at the age of forty. The painting passed from through multiple owners and is now at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. Today, the "Janssen Portrait" is no longer thought to represent Shakespeare and has been retitled "Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman, possibly Thomas Overbury" (also see 17.3.756-2422).

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