Portrait of Edgar Degas in profile

Michel Manzi

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Manzi moved to Paris in the early 1880s to work for the renowned print publishing house Goupil & Cie. A pioneer of photomechanical printmaking, Manzi shared with Edgar Degas an interest in experimentation and innovative reproductive technologies. They worked together on a portfolio of twenty facsimiles of Degas’s drawings in 1898. Manzi also helped Degas to acquire the exceptional collection of prints by Edouard Manet from Philippe Burty’s estate. Among a dozen portraits he made of Degas, this print is dedicated to Paul Arthur Chéramy, a lawyer and collector, who represented Degas at trial in 1887, when he was sued for not finishing a commission.

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