Raffle Ticket for the Painting of Venus and Cupid after Michelangelo

Gerard Vandergucht

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Large sheet with descriptive text and an image below. The text identifies the print as one of 50 raffle tickets, sold at the price of ten guineas for a chance at the painting of Venus and Cupid after a composition by Michelangelo Buonarroti, here attributed to Jacopo Pontormo. The raffle ticket was issues on December 16, 1734, while the auction was to be held on March 29, 1735 at Essex House on the Strand. The ticket also describes that the painting will be available for viewing at the same location on weekdays from noon til 2PM, excepting Sundays and holidays. According to later sources, the raffle never took place as Queen Caroline had taken a liking to the painting and it was acquired by King George II [See: Mrs. Anna Jameson, A Handbook to the Public Galleries of Art in and Near London, part II, London 1842, p. 362]

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