Paris and Helen (Anonymous Tracing after d ’Hancarville)

Jacques Louis David

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The tracing is made from an illustration depicting an ancient vase in the collection of William Hamilton, the British ambassador to Naples in Pierre d’Hancarville, Antiquités étrusques, grecques et romaines tirées du cabinet de M. Hamilton, envoyé extraordinaire et plénipotentiaire de S. M. Britannique en cours de Naples (Naples: François Morelli, 1766–67), vol. 4, pl. 24. According to Rosenberg and Prat (2002, vol. 1, no. 730*, p. 538), the vase depicted in the print was not, in fact, from Hamilton’s collection. The tracing was pasted into one of the large albums of drawings David created following his return from Italy in 1780. Perusing these albums, presumably a few years later, prompted the artist to make a quick sketch in black chalk (see 2022.____) directly on the album page opposite the tracing, focusing on the figures of Paris and Helen. The figural group would evolve through a series of studies, eventually taking the form of the protagonists in David’s painting, The Loves of Paris and Helen, 1788 (Musée du Louvre, Paris).

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