The Syndics

Léopold Flameng

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Flameng was among the last generation of highly-skilled reproductive—or interpretive, as they preferred to be called—printmakers in nineteenth-century France, before photography fully subsumed this practice. He and a small group of devoted etchers considered themselves to be Rembrandt’s successors in their use of the medium. Flameng exhibited this etching after Rembrandt’s The Syndics, 1662 (Rijksmuseum) alongside his interpretation of The Anatomy Lesson, 1632 (Mauritshuis) at the Salon of 1876.

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