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Three Studies of Angels for a Pendentive (recto)

Cristoforo Roncalli1599/1604

The Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland, United States

In 1590, a generation after Michelangelo’s death, the dome he designed for Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome was finally completed. In 1597 Pope Clement VIII commissioned the mosaic decoration of the interior of the dome, choosing Cristoforo Roncalli in part because of his training in Florence, an origin he shared with Michelangelo. Roncalli made this preparatory drawing for the angels that would appear at each side of the four Evangelists in the trapezoidal spaces where the dome meets the supporting arches, called pendentives. Roncalli practiced rendering the foreshortened human form in three studies across the sheet, which are early stages of the design.

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  • Title: Three Studies of Angels for a Pendentive (recto)
  • Creator: Cristoforo Roncalli (Italian, 1552-1626)
  • Date Created: 1599/1604
  • Physical Dimensions: Sheet: 27.8 x 35.3 cm (10 15/16 x 13 7/8 in.)
  • Provenance: Capitaine Carlo Prayer, Milan (Lugt 2044, lower center, in red ink). Juan and Felix Bernasconi, Milan (see photo of collector's signature from sales catalogue, Christie's, London, 6-7 July 1987, no. 71). [W. M. Brady & Co., NY]
  • Type: Drawing
  • Rights: CC0
  • External Link: https://clevelandart.org/art/1989.45.a
  • Medium: red chalk; squared in red chalk (left half), framing lines in red chalk
  • Department: Drawings
  • Culture: Italy, late 16th-early 17th Century
  • Credit Line: Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund
  • Collection: DR - Italian
  • Accession Number: 1989.45.a
The Cleveland Museum of Art

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