Two Street Criers

Two Street Criers

Pierre Brebiette

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This vigorous red chalk drawing is the first design to come to light relating to a series of 43 prints depicting street criers (les cris de Paris), of which Brebiette seems to have supplied the majority of the models. The two figures on this sheet represent boys (or perhaps the same boy?) selling, on the left, new almanacs, and on the right, silver tassels, a kind of passementerie, or decoration to be sewn onto clothing or other decorative items. Both prints (plate 4 and plate 36 in the series, respectively) bear the initials "PB." The name of the printmaker has been lost, but the series was published by the editor Jacques Honervogt around 1630.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.