A Medical Inspection or Miracles Will Never Cease

A Medical Inspection or Miracles Will Never Cease

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Joanna Southcott, grossly caricatured and seen from the back, lifts her petticoats before three doctors who gaze at her. She says, "Seeing is believing are you Now satisfied theres no [sic] Behold the Naked Truth most Learned Doctors." The doctors respond, respectively, "It has a confounded strange appeara[nce]"; "I have my doubts"; and "I cant help suspecting."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A Medical Inspection or Miracles Will Never CeaseA Medical Inspection or Miracles Will Never CeaseA Medical Inspection or Miracles Will Never CeaseA Medical Inspection or Miracles Will Never CeaseA Medical Inspection or Miracles Will Never Cease

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.