Currently not on view
Ceres Driving a Chariot Pulled by Dragons,
late 1550s
Schiavone (Andrea Meldolla), Italian, 1510–1563
x1948-822
Ovid’s Metamorphoses was the literary source for this dramatic representation—perhaps intended for a ceiling decoration—of the goddess Ceres, who flew through the sky in a dragon-powered chariot while searching for her daughter Persephone. In order to light her way during the night, Ceres kindled two pine-torches in the craters of Mount Etna. Absent in the Princeton drawing, the torches appear in a subsequent study in the Musée du Louvre. The fiercely pivoting Ceres likely was inspired by Michelangelo’s wrathful Christ in the Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel (1536–41), whose powerful pose was transmitted quickly via reproductive prints.
Information
Title
Ceres Driving a Chariot Pulled by Dragons
Dates
late 1550s
Medium
Pen and brown wash and brush and brown wash, heightened with lead white, over black chalk on blue laid paper
Dimensions
39.1 × 25.7 cm (15 3/8 × 10 1/8 in.)
frame: 61.1 × 45.7 × 3.2 cm (24 1/16 × 18 × 1 1/4 in.)
Credit Line
Bequest of Dan Fellows Platt, Class of 1895
Object Number
x1948-822
Signatures
Initials in black ink lower right hand corner recto
Reference Numbers
Gibbons 434
Culture
Type
Materials
J. Gulston (?), script (l. 1461, later altered by writing on top of it) recto, lower right, in black; bought at Parsons & Sons, London, 1929; purchased by Dan Fellows Platt, stamp (L. 750a) verso, upper left on mount, in blue, and (L. 2066b), lower left on mount, in blue.;
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Hans Tietze and E. Tietze-Conrat, The Drawings of the Venetian Painters in the 15th and 16th Centuries (New York: J.J. Augustin Publisher, 1944).
, p. 240, no. A1359 - Hans Tietze, European master drawings in the United States, (New York: J.J. Augustin, 1947)., non. 19
- Titian, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, with a group of sixteenth-century Venetian drawings; a loan exhibition 12 February-13 March 1960, (Toronto: Art Gallery of Toronto, 1960)., no. 31
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Terisio Pignatti, I disegni veneziani del Settecento, (Treviso: Canova, 1966?).
, p. 177, fig. 58 - Janos Scholz, "Italian Drawings in the Art Museum of Princeton University," Burlington Magazine 109 no. 770 (May, 1967): p. 290-299., p. 294
- Felton Gibbons, Catalogue of Italian Drawings in The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).
- Francis L. Richardson, Andrea Schiavone, (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1980)., p. 169, no. 281; fig. 160
- 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. 108, cat. no. 44; p. 109 (illus.); p. 233, app. no. 25 (illus.)
