Four Seasons
1680s
17th century
28.4 cm x 42.3 cm (11 3/16 in. x 16 5/8 in.)
Domenico Piola
(Genoa, Italy, 1627 - 1703, Genoa, Italy)
Primary
Object Type:
drawing
Artist Nationality:
Europe, Italian
Medium and Support:
Brush and brown ink over black chalk with traces of red chalk
Credit Line:
Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, The Suida-Manning Collection, 2017
Accession Number:
2017.1307
This is an especially beautiful drawing of Piola’s maturity, appealing in subject, graceful in description, delicate in handling. The theme of the Seasons was treated by Piola on numerous occasions, notably in fresco in collaboration with his son-in-law, Gregorio de Ferrari, in a suite of rooms on the piano nobile of the Palazzo Brignole-Sale (now Rosso). This drawing, an autonomous meditation on the theme to judge from its finish, may well have been conceived around the time and in the context of that project.