The Sacrifice of Polyxena, after Pietro da Cortona

The Sacrifice of Polyxena, after Pietro da Cortona

Jean Robert Ango

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This black chalk drawing is a copy after a painting by Pietro da Cortona of 1623-24, formerly in the Sacchetti palace and now in Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome (inv. 153). Ango is a largely forgotten French artist who made a living in eighteenth-century Rome by producing chalk copies for patrons. This was one of many acquired by the abbé de Saint Non, who would later publish a compendium of etchings after the paintings and antiquities he had seen in Italy. The museum owns a related drawing, The Infant Moses before Pharaoh, after Giovanni Battista Ruggieri (61.234), possibly once mounted together with this one.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Sacrifice of Polyxena, after Pietro da CortonaThe Sacrifice of Polyxena, after Pietro da CortonaThe Sacrifice of Polyxena, after Pietro da CortonaThe Sacrifice of Polyxena, after Pietro da CortonaThe Sacrifice of Polyxena, after Pietro da Cortona

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.