An Ornate Ceiling with an Allegory of Spring

1790/1815

Giacomo Quarenghi

Artist, Venetian, 1744 - 1817

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    pen and black ink with watercolor over graphite on faintly blued-green laid paper

  • Credit Line

    Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

  • Dimensions

    overall: 47.7 × 34.7 cm (18 3/4 × 13 11/16 in.)

  • Accession

    1993.13.2

More About this Artwork

Verdant green fields roll in undulating waves back alongside a road in this horizontal landscape painting. The fields take up the left and center of the composition and are painted with thick, curling strokes of emerald, pea, and celery green, and corn yellow to suggest grasses and plants. The pale green road runs up along the right edge of the painting, and is layered with strokes and daubs in butter yellow, spring green, and faint blue. The fields and road meet the horizon line about halfway up the canvas, where an aquamarine-blue sky swirling with white and periwinkle-blue clouds fills the top half of the painting.

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Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(sale New York, Sotheby's, "Old Master Drawings," January 13, 1993 [lot number 59]); Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox Ltd, London, 1993; purchased 1993, by NGA

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1994

  • Fanciful Flourishes: Ornament in European Graphic Art and Related Objects, 1300-1800, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1994.

2014

  • The Poetry of Light - La poesia della luce: Venetian Drawings from the National Gallery of Art, Museo Correr, Venice, Venice, 2014 - 2015, no. 122.

2023

  • Looking Up: Studies for Ceilings, 1550-1800, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2023.

Inscriptions

by later hand, lower right in graphite: 24.; by later hand, upper right verso in graphite: 20006269/2

Wikidata ID

Q64572214

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