Transept of Aarhus Cathedral

Christen Købke

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

As a student of Eckersberg, Købke integrated direct observation from nature into strict perspectival views, as seen in two church interiors. In the drawing of Saint Canute’s Cathedral, the artist represents the church’s rows of pews, Gothic columns, and vaulted ceiling using perspectival construction. His interest in the cathedral as a motif was likely aroused at the Royal Academy, where medieval architecture was presented as distinctively Danish. While he was a student Købke visited Aarhus, a market town on the Jutland peninsula, in 1829, and made an unusual view of its cathedral from the church’s transept rather than the more renowned nave. This print after Købke’s painting of the subject includes figures examining gravestones and the high altar, although the structure’s dramatic height serves as the main subject of the composition.

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