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Your galleryChrist Child: Study for the Madonna di San Giovanni
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Compare the warm pink pastel on the face and belly with the cool blue-green paper, and see how the dark chalk behind the child pushes him forward.
Barocci drew this lively Christ Child about 1565 for his painting the Madonna di San Giovanni, in black and red chalk with pastel on blue-green paper. The National Gallery calls him the first Italian artist to use colored pastels systematically in preparing his paintings. The Art Institute catalogued the sheet only in 1990, among drawings of its Gurley collection, and published it the next year as a new discovery.
Black and red chalk, with pastel and stumping, on greenish-blue laid paper · 40.1 × 26.3 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · High Renaissance and Mannerism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Christ Child: Study for the Madonna di San Giovanni
- Artist
- Federico Barocci Italian, c. 1535-1612
- Date
- c. 1565
- Medium
- Black and red chalk, with pastel and stumping, on greenish-blue laid paper
- Dimensions
- 40.1 × 26.3 cm (15 13/16 × 10 3/8 in.)
- Credit line
- The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.