Heda's Banquet Piece, Frans Hals' Willem Coymans, and Rembrandt's Lucretia. Paintings by these and other masters attracted the American collectors P. A. B. Widener, his son Joseph, and Andrew W. Mellon, whose bequests form the heart of the National Gallery's distinguished and remarkably cohesive collection of ninety-one Dutch paintings.

This volume describes and reproduces 379 drawings by Italian artists of the seventeenth century in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The most brilliant draughtsmen of this period--Annibale Carracci, G.B. Castiglione, Pietro da Cortona, Guercino, Carlo Maratti, and Salvator Rosa--are well represented in the Museum's collection, and the book offers a survey of Italian baroque draughtsmanship. It includes innovative work by Carracci, as well as drawings by such late baroque masters as Sebastiano Ricci and Francesco Solimena. Four hundred five illustrations are contained in this inventory. Entries for the drawings provide essential bibliographical references, provenance, and a discussion of the purpose of the drawing when known. -- Inside jacket flap.