Art Institute of Chicago

Monks on the Staircase of the Villa of Maecenas at Tivoli

François-Marius Granet

Date

c. 1826

Medium

Pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash, with touches of watercolor, over traces of graphite, on ivory laid paper, perimeter mounted on cream wove paper

Culture

France

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

In this small but powerful ink and wash drawing, Granet depicts a mysterious procession of monks moving from darkness to light up a vaulted stone staircase as monumental as it is stark. The scene’s enigmatic subject matter and gothic mood place this work in the aesthetic category of the sublime, defined in the late 1700s as a kind of “delightful horror.” The sublime was an alternative to the search for ideal beauty that characterized the more classically inspired art of the period with its emphasis on moralizing and exemplary history.

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