The Angelic Guards

James Barry

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Four angelic beings, reminiscent of similar figures by Michelangelo and Raphael, protect the heavenly realm of Elysium from Tartarus: the dark, ill-defined abyssal zone at right. The largest figure guards a key, while others lean over the edge with spears as a cloaked Gabriel broods with a flaming cross on his forehead. At upper right we are shown historical patrons of the arts—Charles I, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Cassiodorus, Francis I, and Agrippa—and above them artists who benefited from enlightened support, including Joshua Reynolds, Giles Hussey, Annibale Carracci, and Domenichino. The etching reproduces central figures in Barry’s enormous painting Elysium and Tartarus (1777–83; Society of Arts, London) and was created as a pendant to Divine Justice (see 2016.595).

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