Paris and Helen

Jacques Louis David

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This sketch is an early study for David’s painting, The Loves of Paris and Helen, 1788 (Musée du Louvre, Paris). It was inspired by a pair of figures in a tracing made from an illustration depicting an ancient vase in the collection of William Hamilton, the British ambassador to Naples. 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 David to make this quick sketch in black chalk directly on the album page opposite the tracing, swapping Paris’s spear for a zither and resting Helen’s arm on his shoulder.

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