Currently not on view
Medea Killing Her Children,
1810–1815
This magnificent large-scale drawing on multiple sheets of paper is attributed to the neoclassical painter Pelagio Palagi, who worked in Bologna, Milan, and Turin. Its size and complex technique indicate that it was intended as a cartoon (or cartone, a large piece of paper) that the artist could use as a guide when painting a work of the same size. Although the drawing cannot be connected to any specific work, and there are no signs that the image was intended to be transferred to another surface, it can be dated stylistically to 1810–15, when Palagi produced similarly dramatic frescoes of literary and mythological subjects. Here, Medea grips a dagger and raises her arm in the midst of the slanderous act of killing her children.
Information
1810–1815
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1987", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 47, no. 1 (1988): p. 30-54., p. 38
- Laura Giles, Lia Markey, Claire Van Cleave, et. al., Italian Master Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2014)., p. 100, cat. no. 42; p. 102 (illus.)
