The Met's new David drawing

April 6 2016

Video: The Met

The Met has bought a drawing by Jacques Louis David, which according to the video above is one of the artist's first explorations of The Death of Socrates, a painting the Met owns. The drawing apparently surfaced on the art market last year. The new addition means that the Met has recently bought two preparatory drawings by David for The Death of Socrates, for in 2013 (regular readers may remember) they bought another, a 'sleeper' in a New York auction, for just $800. The video doesn't say how the two drawings are related.

Update - a reader points me to the latest drawing's sale at Christie's for $593,000. That's a quite a spread for David drawings of the same subject.


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