Cleveland Museum of Art

Three Studies of Angels for a Pendentive (recto)

Cristoforo RoncalliLinkedCulture matchlcp-2f1d4cea46e0

Date: 1599/1604
Medium: red chalk; squared in red chalk (left half), framing lines in red chalk
Culture: Italy, late 16th-early 17th Century
Department: Drawings
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 154881

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

In 1590, a generation after Michelangelo’s death, the dome he designed for Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome was finally completed. In 1597 Pope Clement VIII commissioned the mosaic decoration of the interior of the dome, choosing Cristoforo Roncalli in part because of his training in Florence, an origin he shared with Michelangelo. Roncalli made this preparatory drawing for the angels that would appear at each side of the four Evangelists in the trapezoidal spaces where the dome meets the supporting arches, called pendentives. Roncalli practiced rendering the foreshortened human form in three studies across the sheet, which are early stages of the design.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line: Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund
Provenance: Capitaine Carlo Prayer, Milan (Lugt 2044, lower center, in red ink). Juan and Felix Bernasconi, Milan (see photo of collector's signature from sales catalogue, Christie's, London, 6-7 July 1987, no. 71). [W. M. Brady & Co., NY]

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