1602
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Three Studies of Angels for a Pendentive (recto) is a 1602 by Cristoforo Roncalli, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This drawing shows three studies of angels. The angels are shown in different poses, which suggests the artist was experimenting with how to fit them into the space. The artist was likely thinking about how the angels would look from below, since they would be high up on the dome. You can learn more about this style by looking into the technique of sfumato.
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…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Cristoforo Roncalli was an Italian mannerist painter. He was one of the three painters known as Pomarancio or Il Pomarancio.
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