Elysium & Tartarus, or The State of Final Retribution

James Barry

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This etching reproduces a forty-foot-long mural Barry painted for the Great Room of the Society of Arts in London between 1777 and 1783. As the culmination of a series dedicated to the rise of culture and civilization from ancient to recent times, the image honors "great and good" figures across history, shown gathered here in a heavenly Elysium. At center, the angels Raphael and Gabriel guard the blessed from the darkness of Tartarus, at right, where unidentified forms writhe in torment. The print necessarily condenses and reduces the original to ensure that the faces remain readable. Barry etched and published the plate in 1791–92; his sister issued this state shortly after the artist’s death.

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