1564
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Cupid Drawing His Bow is a 1564 by Federico Barocci, a Renaissance work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a chubby baby with wings pulling back a bow, muscles tensed, ready to shoot. Barocci drew this as a practice sheet—tiny squares grid the paper so he could copy the figure bigger later. He made dozens of sketches first, even modeling the baby in wax. The lines are soft, almost smudged, like he used his finger to blend the chalk. Look up *sfumato* to see how artists like Barocci made edges melt into shadow.
This drawing formed part of the painter Federico Barocci's painstaking working method, which began with studies from nature, included sculpted models in wax, and concluded with full-scale cartoons in color. A detailed figure study such as this would have followed numerous compositional and life studies in preparation for the final cartoon. The squares drawn over the figure indicate it was meant to be transferred to a larger format. Barocci may have made this drawing as a preparatory study for his large altarpiece depicting the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian intended for the Bonaventura Chapel in…
The grid of squares drawn over this figure was used by the artist or his workshop to transfer the composition to a larger format.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Federico Barocci (also written Barozzi) (c. 1535 – 30 September 1612) was an Italian Renaissance painter and printmaker. His original name was Federico Fiori, and he was nicknamed Il Baroccio. His work was highly…
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