Saint Lawrence

1619

Not on view

Cesi was an artist devoted to the Counter-Reformation belief, expressed most forcibly in the 1582 treatise of the Bolognese Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti, that the proper function of painting was the clear communication of a religious message. Like the Carracci brothers, Cesi reacted against the complexity and artificiality of much sixteenth-century painting and returned to the study of nature, beginning each work with careful drawings from the model and abstracting from these to create an ideal form. In his late works, however, such as this modello for an altarpiece of 1619, Cesi strove for an increasingly severe geometry and reductive purity that were far removed from the dramatic action and externalization of emotion characteristic of the Carracci.

Artwork Details

Object Information

Overview

Provenance

Exhibition History

Title: Saint Lawrence
Artist: Bartolomeo Cesi (Italian, Bologna 1556–1629 Bologna)
Date: 1619
Medium: Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash; squared in black chalk
Dimensions: 11 3/16 x 7 3/16in. (28.4 x 18.2cm)
Classification: Drawings
Credit Line: Purchase, Charles and Jessie Price Gift, 2000
Object Number: 2000.495
Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

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Lobster-Tail Burgonet, Steel, leather, gold, North Italian — Lobster-Tail Burgonet
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Three Standing Figures (recto); Seated Woman and a Male Hermit in Half-length (verso), Stefano da Verona (Stefano di Giovanni d'Arbosio di Francia) Italian, Pen and brown ink, over traces of charcoal or black chalk (recto); pen and brown ink, brush with touches of brown wash, over traces of charcoal or black chalk (verso) — Three Standing Figures (recto); Seated Woman and a Male Hermit in Half-length (verso)
Stefano da Verona (Stefano di Giovanni d'Arbosio di Francia)
1435–38

Armor, Steel, copper alloy, textile, leather, Italian — Armor
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ca. 1400–1450 and later

Amya Petitioning Faustus for the Custody of Saint Mamas, Jean Cousin the Elder French, Pen and brown ink, brush and gray wash, heightened with white, over black chalk — Amya Petitioning Faustus for the Custody of Saint Mamas
Jean Cousin the Elder
ca. 1543

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