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Marriage of a Patrician Couple

Creator

Italian Artist · 1509–1512

Nicolò dell'Abate probably first trained with his father, a stuccoist. After serving as a soldier, he assisted a local painter in Modena in 1537, helping to decorate a slaughterhouse facade. Nicolò earned his first major success in 1546, with twelve frescoes of the *Aeneid* for a castle near Modena. In the next year, he moved to Bologna, where his projects included decorating four rooms in a palac

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Date: about 1540–1545
Medium: Oil, on paper, some foreground figures pricked for transfer
Culture: Italian
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum

Italian nobles dressed in their finery gather in pairs or small groups as they enjoy the wedding festivities of a noble couple. Nicolò dell'Abate may have drawn this scene from the popular romantic epics *Orlando innamorato* and *Orlando furioso,* which looked back on medieval chivalry with Renaissance nostalgia. Nicolò dell'Abate made this highly finished oil sketch as a study for a painting. The tiny holes pricked in the figures in the left foreground indicate that they were being prepared for transfer to a wall, canvas, or panel. The artist or his assistants would have blown fine charcoal dust through the holes to reproduce the exact design. Three related studies by Nicolò, similar in size, shape, and style, also depict chivalric subjects, again possibly from the *Orlando cycle.* He may have used all these drawings in preparation for an *Orlando* cycle that he painted in the ducal palace in Sassuolo, near Modena.

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