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Your galleryFantasy on the Death of Seneca
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Look from Seneca’s head thrown back at the left to the basin at the bottom, then up to the watching faces under their turbans and helmets.
The Roman philosopher Seneca took his own life by cutting the veins in his arms. Tiepolo’s version, which the museum calls a fantasy, is quick and free: Seneca lies back across the left of the sheet, a figure bends over a wide basin in front, and onlookers in turbans and helmets crowd in behind. Broad pools of brown wash do most of the work, with only a few lines of the pen.
Pen and brown ink with brush and brown wash, over black chalk, on ivory laid paper · 34 × 24 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Rococo
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Fantasy on the Death of Seneca
- Artist
- Giovanni Battista Tiepolo Italian, 1696–1770
- Date
- 1735/40
- Medium
- Pen and brown ink with brush and brown wash, over black chalk, on ivory laid paper
- Dimensions
- 34 × 24 cm (13 7/16 × 9 1/2 in.)
- Credit line
- Helen Regenstein 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.