King Lear and Cordelia (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 4, Scene 7)

King Lear and Cordelia (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 4, Scene 7)

Francesco Bartolozzi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

West painted several versions of this subject, showing Lear regaining consciousness in the French camp following his ordeal on the heath. This related stipple engraving is closest to a painting at the Huntington Library and Art Gallery, and shows Kent, or a doctor, supporting the traumatized king. When Cordelia asks if her father knows her, Lear replies: "You are a soul in bliss; but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire, that my own tears Do scald like molten lead."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

King Lear and Cordelia (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 4, Scene 7)King Lear and Cordelia (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 4, Scene 7)King Lear and Cordelia (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 4, Scene 7)King Lear and Cordelia (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 4, Scene 7)King Lear and Cordelia (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 4, Scene 7)

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.