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Find the dog lapping in the foreground and the flames rising from the bowl at the center, then the bearded man in robes raising his arm behind them.
Castiglione painted this large sheet with a brush and oil paint directly on paper, a technique he pioneered, probably inspired by Rubens’s oil sketches. He made such sheets as works in their own right, not as studies for paintings, and left some parts detailed and others barely sketched on purpose. Its rare pagan subject was meant for a small circle of learned viewers in Rome.
Oil paint on tan laid paper, laid down on cream wove paper · 57.6 × 42.5 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Baroque
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Details and source
- Museum title
- A Pagan Sacrifice
- Artist
- Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione Italian, 1609-1664
- Date
- c. 1645–50
- Medium
- Oil paint on tan laid paper, laid down on cream wove paper
- Dimensions
- 57.6 × 42.5 cm (22 11/16 × 16 3/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Clarence Buckingham 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.