The King of Rome

Pierre Paul Prud'hon

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print is based on a drawing by Pierre Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823) today in the Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris (inv. PPD1293). It commemorates the birth of Napoleon I (1811-1832), the son and heir apparent of Napoleon I and the Empress Marie Louise. The print was made by Barthélemy Roger, a printmaker who had studied with Prud’hon and the engraver Jacques Louis Copia. The iconography, from the relief of Romulus and Remus to the profile medallion format, refers to ancient Rome and is meant to reinforce the idea that the role of Emperor would descend from Napoleon to his son. Instead, Napoleon would abdicate when his son was only three and Napoleon II died in Vienna at age 21.

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