1676
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Sketch for "The Four Prophets of Israel" (for Il Gesù, Rome) is a 1676 unspecified by Giovanni Battista Gaulli, a Barbizon school work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This small painting shows four old men with beards and scrolls, each in a different pose. They look serious, like they're deep in thought. Artists often made small sketches first to plan big church ceilings. Gaulli used this sketch to figure out how the prophets would look up high in Rome’s Gesù church. See it at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
This small painting represents the four prophets of Israel: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. It is one of seven oil sketches made in preparation for the decoration of the four pendentives in the Jesuit Church of the Gesù in Rome. The artist, one of the most prominent large-scale decorative painters in Rome, is known for his grand painting of the vault of the Gesù. Giovanni Batista Gaulli followed the Italian decorative tradition by preparing this sketch, called a bozzetto, to work out his ideas before the final fresco was painted. Fresco painting was the most desirable media for public…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Giovanni Battista Gaulli (8 May 1639 – 2 April 1709), also known as Baciccio or Baciccia (Genoese nicknames for Giovanni Battista), was an Italian Baroque painter working in the High Baroque and early Rococo periods.
See the richer artist page
