La Pietà

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This etching reproduces Delacroix's Pietà completed in 1844 in Saint-Denys-du-Saint-Sacrement, Paris. It was published first in the journal "L'Artiste" on February 2, 1845, but this impression comes from an 1852 publication "Les Peintres vivants," a collection of one hundred prints after living artists. Delacroix must have appreciated Hédouin's work because that same year, according to his Journal, he supplied the etcher with six sketches. Delacroix had an abiding concern for his legacy and one of the ways he hoped to ensure his reputation was through the circulation of his compositions in print.

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