Venus and Cupid in a Chariot
1615–17
Guercino
Guercino (Italian, 1591–1666)
Drawings
Venus and Cupid in a Chariot, 1615–17. Guercino (Italian, 1591–1666). Pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over red chalk; sheet: 25.5 x 39.4 cm (10 1/16 x 15 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Dudley P. Allen Fund 1925.1188 Giovanni Francesco Barbiere, called Guercino, was a prolific draftsman who used drawing not only to prepare for his many painting commissions but also to record and explore his ideas for future use. This preparatory drawing, made early in his career, reflects Guercino's nonlinear preparatory process and his simultaneous work on different compositions. It relates in format to the painted decoration at the Casa Pannini in his native town of Cento, but it features Venus instead of Diana as in the finished fresco. Guercino's combination of rapid and sure pen lines with ink wash, applied with expert variegation to create deep shadows and bright highlights, is a paradigm of the artist's exuberant high Baroque style. Two miniscule female forms appear at the bottom edge of the sheet and may pertain to an earlier idea for the composition or to one of many other compositions Guercino conceived for the commission.
- Maker/Artist
- Guercino
- Classification
- Drawing
- Formatted Medium
- Pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over red chalk
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 25.5 x 39.4 cm (10 1/16 x 15 1/2 in.)
- Inscribed
- Inscription: upper right, in brown ink: 44 .
- Departments
- Drawings
- Accession Number
- 1925.1188
- Credit Line
- Dudley P. Allen Fund
- Exhibitions
- Master Drawings Selected from the Museums and Private Collections of America, Drawings from the Museum Collection, Drawings from the Collection of Sir Robert Witt, London, Old Master Drawings from the Museum Collection, Drawings by Old Italian Masters, Drawings from the Museum Collection, Drawings from the Museum Collection, Italian Drawings, 1330-1780, Drawings from the Museum Collection, 50th Anniversary of the Museum's Opening, Seventy Master Drawings, Old Master Drawings from Midwestern Museums, Department of Prints and Drawings Opening Exhibition, Italian and French Drawings, Drawings from the Museum Collection: 15th-17th Centuries, Drawings, Old Master Drawings, Art in Italy, 1600-1700, Art in Italy, 1600-1700, Old Master Prints and Drawings, Drawings from the Museum Collection, Italian Prints and Drawings, Drawings, Connoisseurship in Italian Figural Compositions, National Schools of Style, Baroque Imagery, Italian Drawings from the Permanent Collection, Guercino: Master Draftsman: Works from North American Collections, Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art
- Rights Statement
- CC0
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