Study for the Allegory of Religion

Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The traditional attribution of this very lively drawing to the Baroque master, Pietro da Cortona, was endorsed by Jacob Bean in his catalogue of The Met's seventeenth century Italian drawings (1979). The subject was recognized by Bruce Davis (1983) as a study for the Allegory of Religion frescoed between 1629 and 1639 by the artist on the vault of the main hall of the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. This identification was upheld by Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò (1997). On the Barberini ceiling, Religion is placed right below the personification of Rome, on the upper left section of the decoration. In the fresco painting, she holds a monumental, ornate, gold key. Cortona often used red chalk to draw figural studies after living models.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art