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Study of Two Figures for the Age of Gold

1637
Not on view
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.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Study of Two Figures for the Age of Gold
  • Artist: Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini) (Italian, Cortona 1596–1669 Rome)
  • Date: 1637
  • Medium: Black chalk, slightly reworked by the artist with the wet tip of the chalk stick
  • Dimensions: 12 11/16 x 9 3/4in. (32.3 x 24.7cm)
  • Classification: Drawings
  • Credit Line: Bequest of Walter C. Baker, 1971
  • Object Number: 1972.118.250
  • Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

More Artwork

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Men Digging and Constructing a Wall, Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini) Italian, Pen and brown ink, over black chalk
Men Digging and Constructing a Wall
Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini)
17th century
Sculptures of Dafrosa and Flaviano, standing in a niche in the Church of Santa Bibiana, Rome
Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini)
Giovanni Giacomo De Rossi
ca. 1680–91
Barberinai Aulae Fornix
Multiple artists/makers
ca. 1648–77
The Virgin Immaculate, Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini) Italian, Red chalk
The Virgin Immaculate
Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini)
1596–1669
Wisdom leading the muses
Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini)
Jean Mariette
ca. 1690–1740

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