Study of Two Figures for the Age of Gold

Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini)

1637 · Black chalk, slightly reworked by the artist with the wet tip of the chalk stick · Drawings and Prints

In June 1637, Pietro da Cortona, the leading Italian Baroque painter of his time, arrived in Florence and immediately began a fresco cycle commissioned by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando II (1610-1670) and his wife Vittoria della Rovere (1622-1694), for the Camera della Stufa in the Pitti Palace. The subject was the Four Ages of the World as recounted at the beginning of Ovid's Metamorphoses, a classical literary source. This drawing is a study for the couple seated at the left in the Age of Gold. In this fresco the young woman crowns the seated youth with a laurel of victory, an allusion to the name Vittoria, while putti, laden with branches of oak (rovere), advance without disturbing a docile lion, these are references to the Medici - Della Rovere marriage symbolized by the youthful couple.

Artist

Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini)

Date

1637

Medium

Black chalk, slightly reworked by the artist with the wet tip of the chalk stick

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Bequest of Walter C. Baker, 1971