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The Assassination and Funeral of Julius Caesar

Workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni

1458

tempera

canvas

From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago

Early Renaissance Renaissance Renaissance History Painting

Dominant colour

The Assassination and Funeral of Julius Caesar is a 1458 tempera by Workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni, a Early Renaissance work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.

Who painted this?: Workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni
When & what style?: 1458 · Early Renaissance
Where can I see it?: Art Institute of Chicago

About this work

This painting shows a scene from ancient Rome. It depicts a crowd of people surrounding Julius Caesar's body. The detail that makes this work interesting is the way the artist used a mix of bright and dark colors to show the emotions of the people in the scene, which adds to the drama of the event. To learn more about this style of art, look up the technique: tempera.

The story of this work

Provenance

Richard Warren Sears II (d. 1949), Chicago, by 1923 [Sears lent the painting and 1974.394 to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1923, see correspondence in curatorial file]; at Sears’s death to his widow, C. Ruby Sears (d. 1974); bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1974.

Publication history

Raimond van Marle, The Development of the Italian Schools of Painting, vol.10 (The Hague, 1928), pp. 554-56, ill. Ellen Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni (Oxford, 1974), pp. 47, 75, no. 57, fig. 214. Ellen Callmann, “Roman Virtue and Renaissance Marriage,” The Register of the Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas 6, 8/9 (1991/1992), pp. 30–32, 35–36, fig. 14. Christopher Lloyd, Italian Painting before 1600 in the Art Institute of Chicago. A Catalogue of the Collection (Chicago, 1993), pp. 13-15, ill. Graham Hughes, Renaissance Cassoni. Masterpieces of Early Italian Art: Painted…

Read the full account in the museum source.