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Phaeton Driving the Chariot of Phoebus

Northern Italian

1488

tempera

canvas

From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago

Early Renaissance Renaissance Renaissance Mythology

Dominant colour

About this work

You see a young man gripping the reins of four wild horses, their hooves kicking up clouds of dust against a dark sky. This painting is one of the earliest surviving works on canvas—most artists of the time used wood panels. Canvas was cheaper but harder to control, so the brushstrokes look loose and lively. The story comes from Greek myth: Phaeton, son of the sun god, loses control of his father’s chariot, nearly burning the earth. To see how other artists handled the same myth, look up the technique tempera.

The story of this work

Provenance

Paolo Paolini, Rome; sold American Art Galleries, New York, December 10–11, 1924, no. 94 (ill.), as Parentino, for $650 to George F. Harding, Jr. [buyer according to The George F. Harding Museum papers, Art Institute Archives; price according to American Art Sales 1924]; George F. Harding, Jr. (died 1939), Chicago, from 1924; bequeathed to the George F. Harding Museum, Chicago, 1939; offered for sale Sotheby’s, New York, December 2, 1976, no. 95 (ill.), withdrawn; transferred to the Art Institute, 1982; accessioned 1984.

Publication history

American Art Sales (Washington D.C., 1924), p. 7. Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972), pp. 249, 474, 572. Christopher Lloyd, Italian Paintings before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Collection (Chicago, 1993), pp. 82–85, ill. Hans-Joachim Eberhardt, "Sulle tracce degli affreschi scomparsi di Sant'Anastasia" in Pisanello, ed. Paola Marini, exh. cat. Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona, 1996, pp. 178, 181, ill. (detail). Marcella Morongiu, ‘Currus…

Read the full account in the museum source.