Ruins at Pompeii

Ruins at Pompeii

Gabriel-Auguste Ancelet

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

While studying in Italy as winner of the Prix de Rome for architecture in 1851, Ancelet took a great interest in the recently excavated sites of Pompeii and the Appian Way. He executed this drawing with an architect’s precision, first laying out his composition with ruled graphite perspectival lines before applying the watercolor. His study brilliantly captures the strong light and shadows as they fell across the ruins on a cloudless day.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.