Study for the Head of St. Michael

1633

Study for the Head of St. Michael, 1633. Pietro da Cortona (Italian, 1596–1669). Black chalk; sheet: 19 x 16.8 cm (7 1/2 x 6 5/8 in.); secondary support: 31.9 x 27.6 cm (12 9/16 x 10 7/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1996.257 Pietro da Cortona drew this angelically beautiful face in a style reminiscent of the work of Renaissance master Raphael (1483–1520). Cortona's use of black chalk to develop extremely subtle effects of shading shows the technique at its most refined. He drew this sheet in preparation for a ceiling decoration, Saint Michael and Angels with the Instruments of the Passion, painted in fresco in the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella (better known as the Chiesa Nuova, or "New Church") in Rome, completed in 1633. The fresco for which this drawing was made as a preparatory study joins works of art by Peter Paul Rubens as well as relics of the Saint Philip Neri in the Chiesa Nuova in Rome.