Drawings and Prints: Selections from the Permanent Collection

The spring rotation in the Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery features a group of Dutch and British mezzotints anchored by the medium's greatest early work: The Great Executioner with the Head of John the Baptist, made by Prince Rupert of the Rhine (Bohemian, 1619–1682) in 1658, shortly after the technique was invented.

Also on display are drawings by Edward Detmold (British, 1883–1957) of subjects from Arabian Nights, as well as works by John Linnell (British, 1792–1882). A selection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European drawings and prints celebrates the music of Mozart, particularly his operas.

Prints after the Renaissance master Michelangelo Buonarroti—executed by Marcantonio Raimondi (Italian, ca. 1480–before 1534), Giulio Bonasone (Italian, active 1531–after 1576), Nicholas Beatrizet, and others—demonstrate Michelangelo's wide artistic range as a painter, sculptor, draftsman, and architect. These works played an essential role in disseminating Michelangelo's art in the sixteenth century.

A selection of drawings focuses on the close relationship between humans and horses and includes recent acquisitions by artists ranging from Fra Bartolomeo (Italian, 1473–1517), Philip Wouwerman (Dutch, 1619–1668), and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Italian, 1696–1770) to Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973). A related grouping of sixteenth-century German prints centers on Hans Baldung's Group of Seven Horses (1534) and demonstrates how Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528) and Lucas Cranach (German, 1472–1553) employed similar motifs to very different ends.

Finally, German woodcuts by Albrecht Altdorfer (German, ca. 1480–1538) and Michael Ostendorfer (German, ca. 1490–1549) focus on the consequences of the expulsion of the Jews from Regensburg in 1519.