The Death Bed of Robert, King of Naples, from "Illustrated London News"

The Death Bed of Robert, King of Naples, from "Illustrated London News"

Edward Dalziel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Edward Dalziel’s wood engraving reproduces an 1847-48 painting by Elmore (now Lytham St. Annes Art Collection, England), made two years after the artist returned to London from studying art in Europe. The work shows Robert of Anjou (1278-1343) (known as Robert the Wise, who ruled as King of Naples 1309–43). An influential leader, Robert was known as "The Peacemaker of Italy" and transformed Naples into an elegant medieval city, a center for the arts with a flourishing university. This print captures his final moments, with the crown about to pass to his teenage granddaughter, Joanna. Since Elmore’s painting was made soon after Victoria acceded to the British throne, the imagery would have been interpreted as having contemporary parallels (Joanna came to the throne at fifteen or sixteen, her step-grandmother acted as regent, and Joanna marriage to a kinsman whose position and title were much debated—similarly Victoria came to the throne under her mother’s control and married her cousin Albert, provoking British debate about the nature of his role as Prince Consort).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Death Bed of Robert, King of Naples, from "Illustrated London News"The Death Bed of Robert, King of Naples, from "Illustrated London News"The Death Bed of Robert, King of Naples, from "Illustrated London News"The Death Bed of Robert, King of Naples, from "Illustrated London News"The Death Bed of Robert, King of Naples, from "Illustrated London News"

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.