Study of a Seated Youth for the Age of Gold

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. Together with another sheet in the Museum's collection (inv. 1972.118.250), this drawing is a study for a youth seated at the left in the "Age of Gold". In this fresco a 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. Comparing the two drawings, here the position of the youth's right arm is closer in to the solution adopted in the fresco, but in both figure studies his left arm (here only lightly indicated) is raised, while in the fresco it rests across his chest. A further study for the same seated figure is in Rome (Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, Corsini Collection inv. 124324).