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Your galleryHead of the Swooning Virgin: Study for the Deposition (recot) Base of Column (verso)
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Notice how large the head is on the sheet, drawn at full scale, and how soft smudged charcoal shapes the closed eyes and the face falling back.
Barocci, Urbino’s most important painter after Raphael, prepared his pictures with long series of drawings, as Raphael had. Of the thirty-six studies known for his Deposition, which he painted about 1568 to 1569 for Perugia Cathedral, this life-size head of the fainting Virgin is one of three full-scale cartoons used to transfer the design. The sheet is pieced together, and its lines are incised for that transfer.
Black chalk and charcoal, with stumping and traces of white chalk, on tan laid paper, pieced and incised · 29.4 × 23.9 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · High Renaissance and Mannerism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Head of the Swooning Virgin: Study for the Deposition (recot) Base of Column (verso)
- Artist
- Federico Barocci Italian, c. 1535-1612
- Date
- 1568/69
- Medium
- Black chalk and charcoal, with stumping and traces of white chalk, on tan laid paper, pieced and incised
- Dimensions
- 29.4 × 23.9 cm (11 5/8 × 9 7/16 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.