Valentine
ca. 1775
Medium
Ink on vellum
Dimensions
Sheet: 8 7/8 × 3 15/16 in. (22.5 × 10 cm)
Classification
Ephemera|Drawings|Ornament & Architecture
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Mrs. Richard Riddell, 1984
Accession Number
1984.1164.69
Tags
Art Historical Context
This delicate valentine, created anonymously in France around 177, exemplifies the intimate art of courtship during the late eighteenth century. Rendered in ink on vellum—a fine, durable parchment prized for its smooth surface and elegant sheen—the small sheet (roughly the size of a bookmark) was designed as a personal token of affection. Its classification as ephemera highlights how such objects blended everyday romance with artistic expression, often exchanged on Saint Valentine’s Day or as love notes. The artwork’s floral and landscape motifs evoke the period’s fascination with nature as a...
About the Artist
Anonymous, French, 18th century · 1700–1800
The artist known as Anonymous, French, 18th century, represents a collective of unidentified talents active roughly between 1700 and 1800, a period of profound artistic evolution in France from the opulent Rococo to the austere dawn of Neoclassicism and Revolutionary fervor. Little is documented about their personal training or mentors, as their anonymity obscures individual biographies, though th...