Studies for "Hercules at the Crossroads" and for the "Nativity" Yale University Art Gallery

ca. 1748

Pompeo Girolamo Batoni is best known for his portraits of British and Irish aristocrats in Italy on the Grand Tour. Batoni’s early career, however, was dedicated to religious and mythological subjects, the style of which reflects his study of antiquity and of the work of Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino), Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri), and Guido Reni. The figure at left in this drawing is a preparatory study for the Virgin in Batoni’s Nativity (Palazzo Corsini, Rome). At center and at right are studies of Minerva (representing Virtue) and Venus (representing Vice) for a painting of a mythological story known as Hercules at the Crossroads, in which Hercules is shown at the moment when he was forced to choose between an easy life of pleasure and a hard road to virtue and glory. Batoni painted this subject several times; this drawing relates to a painting dated 1748 (Lichtenstein Museum, Vienna).

Medium: Red and white chalk tinted with tan wash, squared for transfer in red chalk
Dimensions: 9 1/2 × 14 1/16 in. (24.1 × 35.7 cm)
framed: 15 1/2 × 20 1/2 in. (39.37 × 52.07 cm)
Credit Line: Everett V. Meeks, B.A. 1901, Fund
Accession Number: 1965.9.16
Culture: Italian
Period: 18th century
Classification: Drawings
Disclaimer: Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

Provenance

P & D Colnagni & Co., London, 1965; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn.
This work appears on our "Artworks with Nazi-Era Provenance Documentation Gaps" page.

Bibliography

Lisa Hodermarsky, Suzanne Boorsch, and John J. Marciari, Master Drawings from the Yale University Art Gallery, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2006), 193–95, no. 64, ill.

Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Vision and Continuity: Italian Drawings from the Permanent Collection, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1991), 28, no. 47, cover ill., ill.

Object copyright

No Copyright - United States

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