Visiting the Imprisoned

François Hutin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print is from a series depicting The Seven Mercies made by François Hutin presumably during his stay in Rome, from 1737 to 1742. His facility with the etching needle is evident in the expressive forms of the figures and the mastery of light effects. After his death, his son would claim them as his own work, altering the first initial in the signature from "F" to "C" when he published a collection of his etchings in Dresden in 1763.

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