Past Exhibition

The Age of Correggio and the Carracci

In the left half of this horizontal painting, a bare-chested, seated woman, Venus, is tended by three nude women and several child-like, nude, winged putti. All the women and putti have pale, peachy skin. To our right, a statue of a man stands on an ornately carved pedestal on a veranda in front of a distant landscape. Venus sits facing our right and she looks into a rectangular, black-framed mirror she holds up with her left hand. Her blond hair is braided and she has delicate features. A sky-blue cloth wraps around her waist and lap, and covers her legs. One foot rests on the lap of a seated putto, who ties on a sandal. Another putto helps hold up the mirror. A third putto near us, in front of Venus, pulls strings of pearls from a gold box and the fourth, in the lower left corner, lifts a comb and long needle out of a gilded, rectangular box. Two of the women behind Venus tend to her hair and the third holds up and gazes at a teardrop-shaped pearl. A dusky rose-pink curtain falls behind the women and putti. The view opens onto a terrace on the right half of the painting. A gray stone sculpture of a nude man holding up a bunch of grapes with one hand and bracing a tall stick with the other stands facing our left on an ornately carved base. The base is made up of a wide, shallow bowl above a single pedestal foot. In the distance, two people sit against a tall balustrade. The person on the left wears gold-colored armor, a helmet, and holds a long spear. The bearded man to the right appears to be nude as he leans to the side toward his companion, resting his hand and chin along a staff propped on the bench's seat. Trees and mountains in the landscape beyond are painted with brown, deep gray, and forest and sage green. A sliver of white sky along the horizon brightens an otherwise steel-gray sky.
Annibale Carracci, Venus Adorned by the Graces, 1590/1595, oil on panel transferred to canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.9

Details

  • Dates

    -

  • Locations

    West Building, Main Floor, 27 galleries, East Garden Court (40,000 sq. ft.)
In the left half of this horizontal painting, a bare-chested, seated woman, Venus, is tended by three nude women and several child-like, nude, winged putti. All the women and putti have pale, peachy skin. To our right, a statue of a man stands on an ornately carved pedestal on a veranda in front of a distant landscape. Venus sits facing our right and she looks into a rectangular, black-framed mirror she holds up with her left hand. Her blond hair is braided and she has delicate features. A sky-blue cloth wraps around her waist and lap, and covers her legs. One foot rests on the lap of a seated putto, who ties on a sandal. Another putto helps hold up the mirror. A third putto near us, in front of Venus, pulls strings of pearls from a gold box and the fourth, in the lower left corner, lifts a comb and long needle out of a gilded, rectangular box. Two of the women behind Venus tend to her hair and the third holds up and gazes at a teardrop-shaped pearl. A dusky rose-pink curtain falls behind the women and putti. The view opens onto a terrace on the right half of the painting. A gray stone sculpture of a nude man holding up a bunch of grapes with one hand and bracing a tall stick with the other stands facing our left on an ornately carved base. The base is made up of a wide, shallow bowl above a single pedestal foot. In the distance, two people sit against a tall balustrade. The person on the left wears gold-colored armor, a helmet, and holds a long spear. The bearded man to the right appears to be nude as he leans to the side toward his companion, resting his hand and chin along a staff propped on the bench's seat. Trees and mountains in the landscape beyond are painted with brown, deep gray, and forest and sage green. A sliver of white sky along the horizon brightens an otherwise steel-gray sky.
Annibale Carracci, Venus Adorned by the Graces, 1590/1595, oil on panel transferred to canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.9

Overview: 79 paintings created in the northern Italian province between 1500 and 1700 were shown. John Pope-Hennessy of the Metropolitan Museum in New York chose the 16th-century Emilian paintings, Sydney Freedberg of the National Gallery chose the 17th-century works, and Andrea Emiliani of the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna oversaw negotiations and loans in Italy. Each venue showed a slight variation of the exhibition.

Organization: Beverly Louise Brown and Sydney J. Freedberg designed the exhibition for the National Gallery.

Sponsor: The exhibition was supported in part by the Montedison Group, Alitalia, the Italian-American Cultural Institution, and by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Attendance: 107,187

Catalog: The Age of Correggio and the Carracci, Emilian Painting of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1986.

Other Venues:

  • Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna, 09/10/1986–11/10/1986
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 03/19/1987–05/24/1987

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