Triumph of Hercules
1690s
18th century
48.2 cm x 36.3 cm (19 in. x 14 5/16 in.)
Lorenzo De Ferrari
(Genoa, Italy, 1680 – 1744, Genoa, Italy)
Primary
Object Type:
drawing
Artist Nationality:
Europe, Italian
Medium and Support:
Pen and brown ink with brush and brown wash with white heightening over black chalk on cream antique laid paper
Credit Line:
Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, The Suida-Manning Collection, 2017
Accession Number:
2017.1087
Son and pupil of Gregorio de Ferrari, Lorenzo carried on his father’s extravagant decorative manner while imposing a more conventional, academic order first gathered from the Bolognese active in Genoa, then reinforced by the classical Baroque tradition he experienced on a trip to Rome. This grand study for an illusionistic ceiling fresco epitomizes this style at an early stage, with its composition dependent upon one realized by Gregorio for the Palazzo Balbi-Senarega in the mid 1680s, but its construction more regular, forms more conventional, and handling more restrained. Despite its scale and elaborateness, the drawing is not connected with any known work by Lorenzo.