La Pietà, from "L'Illustration"

La Pietà, from "L'Illustration"

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published just two weeks after the death of Delacroix, this print is described as the artist's "last drawing on wood." Customarily, to make a wood engraving, an artist would supply a drawing on paper to be translated by another hand onto the wood block, before being engraved by yet another practitioner. By drawing directly onto the wood himself, Delacroix believed the medium could serve as an outlet for the direct expression of his thought. This composition corresponds more closely with Delacroix's first oil sketch (private collection) for his Pietà than the final mural executed in Saint-Denys-du-Saint-Sacrement, which does not include the angels and reverses the figural group.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

La Pietà, from "L'Illustration"La Pietà, from "L'Illustration"La Pietà, from "L'Illustration"La Pietà, from "L'Illustration"La Pietà, from "L'Illustration"

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.