View of Rome (recto); A Woman's Head In Profile (verso)

baron François Gérard

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Born in Italy to a French father and an Italian mother, Gérard studied in Paris with Jacques Louis David. After the death of his father in 1790, he returned to Rome with his family, where he stayed until 1791. It was during this period that he must have made this drawing which exhibits a strong debt to the Italian landscapes of his master. Sketched first in black chalk, presumably en plein air, and then supplemented with gray wash, the sheet uses the strong contrasts of sun and shadow to meld the varied architecture into a collage of geometric forms.

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