Labor

Raphael Sadeler I

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Love, labor, honor, and pain: these are the four stages of human life according to many early modern artists, including Sadeler. In this image of labor, Minerva, goddess of crafts, commerce, and the arts (as well as wisdom), appears above a muscular young man who seems to have been interrupted in the act of measurement. He gazes at a building under construction, with a compass in his left hand, a large architectural treatise in his right, and various instruments of the liberal arts at his feet. In the distance are industrious scenes of men and women engaged in harvesting and weaving. Labor is understood here to encompass not only the virtues of physical activity but also the diligence required to produce works of art, mathematics, and science.

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