Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Coresus and Callirhoë
Jean Honoré Fragonard French
Not on view
In this expressive drawing, Fragonard returns to the composition of his most ambitious painting, a monumental canvas depicting the high priest Coresus (standing) sacrificing himself to save his beloved Callirhoë, who leans against him in a faint. The fame of the painting, which was widely acclaimed when it was publicly exhibited in 1765 and won him entry to the Académie Royale, must have encouraged the artist to revisit the subject in a different medium. Despite the smaller scale of the drawing, its treatment of the subject, in golden brown wash over a loose chalk sketch, shows Fragonard’s renewed engagement with the emotional drama of the scene.
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