Interpretation
Largely self-taught, the celebrated Baroque artist Guercino was a brilliant draftsman who produced thousands of exploratory studies for his paintings. These two sketches exemplify how he exploited economical means for maximum expression, combining elegant yet robust contours with subtly varied washes to convey the humanity of the subject matter with dramatic lighting and spatial effects. This horizontal composition is one of Guercino’s many rough drafts for the vertical altarpiece of The Visitation (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen), which depicts the mutual rejoicing of the Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth over their miraculous pregnancies. Here, Guercino considers the idea (abandoned in the painting) of showing Mary dismounting from the donkey as she is about to embrace Elizabeth; their husbands Joseph and Zacharias are peripheral characters.
Information
- Title
- The Visitation: Elizabeth Aids the Virgin to Dismount; Verso: Elizabeth Embracing the Virgin
- Object Number
- x1948-745
- Medium
- Pen, brown ink and light gray wash on cream laid paper; verso: pen and dark brown ink
- Dates
- ca. 1632
- Dimensions
- 20 x 22.3 cm (7 7/8 x 8 3/4 in.)
- Credit Line
- Bequest of Dan Fellows Platt, Class of 1895
- Felton Gibbons, Catalogue of Italian Drawings in The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977)., Vol. 1: p. 103, no. 274 (illustrated in Vol. 2 under the same catalog number)
- Luigi Salerno, I Dipinti del Guercino, (Rome: Ugo Bozzi Editore, 1988).
- Denis Mahon and Nicholas Turner, The drawings of Guercino in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
- David Stone, Guercino, master draftsman: works from North American collections, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museum; Bologna, Italy: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1991)., 217
- Nicholas Turner and Carol Plazzotta, Drawings by Guercino from British collections: with an appendix describing the drawings by Guercino, his school and his followers in the British Museum, (London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press in association with Leonardo-De Luca Editori, 1991).
- 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. xxxvii, fig. 17
Feedback
The Museum regularly researches its objects and their collecting histories, updating its records to reflect new information. We also strive to catalogue works of art using language that is consistent with how people, subjects, artists, and cultures describe themselves. As this effort is ongoing, the Museum’s records may be incomplete or contain terms that are no longer acceptable. We welcome your feedback, questions, and additional information that you feel may be useful to us. Email us at collectionsinfo@princeton.edu.
Want to use an image from the Museum's collections? Review our image use and access policies.