Full title | Cephalus carried off by Aurora in her Chariot |
---|---|
Artist | Agostino Carracci |
Artist dates | 1557 - 1602 |
Series | The Farnese Gallery Cartoons |
Date made | about 1597 |
Medium and support | Charcoal and white chalk (a grey wash applied later over the whole) on paper |
Dimensions | 202.5 x 398.8 cm |
Acquisition credit | Presented by Lord Francis Egerton, 1837 |
Inventory number | NG147 |
Location | Not on display |
Collection | Main Collection |
A strong, determined woman is pushing a reluctant youth into a chariot on the left. This is Aurora, goddess of the dawn, who has fallen in love with a mortal, the hunter Cephalus. He resists her advances, for he is already in love with Procris, daughter of the king of Athens.
This is one of two large drawings made in connection with the ceiling decoration of the Gallery in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, which was begun in 1597. The other drawing, A Woman borne off by a Sea God (?), is also in the National Gallery’s collection. The project, centred around the classical theme of the loves of the gods, was largely designed and executed by Annibale Carracci, with the assistance of his older brother Agostino. These large sheets represent the final stage of the preparatory drawings – the full-scale cartoons from which images were transferred onto the ceiling.
A strong, determined woman is pushing a reluctant youth into a chariot on the left. This is Aurora, goddess of the dawn, who has fallen in love with a mortal, the hunter Cephalus, whose hound and spear lie on the ground lower left. He resists her advances, for he is already in love with Procris, daughter of the king of Athens. In the centre, Cupid scatters rose petals on the couple. An elderly bearded figure slumbers on the right: this may be Tithonus, Aurora’s aged husband, or – as is the case in Nicolas Poussin’s Cephalus and Aurora – the river god Oceanus, marking the site of the rising and setting of the sun (the place from which Aurora emerges). The tale of Cephalus and Aurora is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (7: 701–14). It became a well-known story during the Renaissance, when the Metamorphoses was translated into Italian verse.
This is one of two large drawings made in connection with the ceiling decoration of the Gallery in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, which was begun in 1597. The vaulted ceiling and end walls were covered with a riotous juxtaposition of gods and goddesses, nymphs and satyrs, trompe l'oeil architecture, statues, bronze medallions and writhing seated nudes. The project, centred around the classical theme of the loves of the gods, was largely designed and executed by Annibale Carracci, with the assistance of his older brother Agostino. This drawing and A Woman borne off by a Sea God (?) are the designs for two large paintings above the centre of the long sides of the Gallery, thought to have been painted by Agostino. Other related preparatory studies make it likely that Agostino was also largely responsible for the design and execution of this cartoon, although Annibale may have contributed the very naturalistic dog in the foreground.
Cartoons were used to transfer images onto a wall or ceiling before they were painted in fresco. This full-scale cartoon was cut up into sections, so that each one could be transferred onto a patch of fresh plaster which was applied to the ceiling and painted on in a single working session. The outlines of the design were incised into the plaster using a sharp instrument called a stylus. The artist would have tried to complete whole figures or sections of the design in each session, so that the joins would not be visible in the final painting.
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Cephalus carried off by Aurora in her Chariot
The Farnese Gallery Cartoons
These huge cartoons were made in preparation for the painted ceiling in the Gallery of one of Rome’s greatest Renaissance private palaces, the Palazzo Farnese (now the site of the French Embassy in Rome). In 1593 Odoardo Farnese, who had just been made a cardinal, opened negotiations to get the Carracci brothers to decorate the palace he had inherited the previous year. Annibale Carracci moved to Rome in 1595, and was followed by his older brother Agostino two years later.
The Carraccis frescoed the vault and end walls of the long narrow Gallery on the first floor of the palace, where the Farnese family’s extensive collection of antiquities were displayed. Packed with illusionistic architecture, sculptures and painted mythological scenes illustrating the loves of the gods, the ceiling gives the impression of being three-dimensional. The frescoed decoration in the Palazzo Farnese is rightly considered the Carraccis' crowning achievement and was widely admired both during their lifetime and afterwards.
These huge cartoons, Cephalus carried off by Aurora in her Chariot and A Woman borne off by a Sea God, were made in preparation for scenes on the painted ceiling in the Gallery of one of Rome’s greatest Renaissance private palaces, the Palazzo Farnese (now the site of the French Embassy in Rome). In 1593 the nineteen-year-old Odoardo Farnese, who had just been made a cardinal, opened negotiations to bring the Carracci brothers to Rome to decorate the palace he had inherited the previous year. Annibale Carracci moved to Rome in 1595, and was followed by his older brother Agostino in 1597.
Annibale first decorated the Cardinal’s study, the Camerino, and then moved on to the ceiling of the Gallery in 1597, with assistance from his brother. The Gallery is a long narrow room on the first floor of the palace, which was used to display the Farnese family’s extensive collection of antiquities. Its barrel-vaulted ceiling posed a challenge due to its steep curvature but Annibale devised an ingenious scheme for its decoration. Packed with trompe l‘oeil pictures and statues, the vault and two end walls are entirely painted but the illusion is so skilful that the visitor is fooled into believing that at least parts of it are three-dimensional. Painted architecture, stucco work, illusionistic bronze medallions, marble sculptures and mythological paintings jostle for space and attention. Naked youths lounge on the cornice that runs around the room, recalling Michelangelo’s famous ignudi (nude male figures) on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which Annibale must have studied closely. All these elements make up an imagined gallery, complementing the setting of the sculptures displayed below.
The ceiling is the result of Annibale’s momentous encounter with classical antiquity and the art of the High Renaissance in Rome. His intensive study of Michelangelo and Raphael, especially the latter’s frescoes in the Villa Farnesina (which also belonged to Cardinal Odoardo), and of Roman antique sculpture, moved his art towards the more monumental and classical style of his later works.
The complex, multi-layered design of the Farnese ceiling is based on well-known Roman models, in particular the Sistine Chapel, although its themes are classical rather than biblical: the loves of the gods, largely taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The Carracci brothers followed the normal practice in planning the decoration of the ceiling. Numerous preparatory drawings were made – compositional studies, figure studies, drawings for decorative details (many of which survive) – and after these came full-scale drawings, or cartoons, from which the designs were transferred onto the ceiling. The drawings, in particular, show how the brothers’ ideas developed and what were their literary and artistic sources.
In the centre of the vault above each long wall of the Gallery is a large rectangular scene in a trompe l‘oeil frame, seemingly propped up on the cornice. The National Gallery’s drawings are the cartoons for these two painted scenes. The exact nature of the two brothers’ collaboration on the ceiling decoration is not clear, although the project was well advanced by the time Agostino arrived in Rome in 1597 (he left in 1600, following a dispute with Annibale). It is generally thought that Agostino painted the two frescoes for which these cartoons are the designs, although Annibale may have contributed various elements and had overall control of the project.
After a series of delays, the ceiling was finally completed in 1601. When the vault was nearly finished, Annibale was paid 500 scudi – a miserly sum for a masterpiece which had been in the making for over three years. Annibale’s disappointment probably contributed to his mental breakdown and his inability to fulfil later commissions, but the fame of the ceiling was such that it was – and still is – considered the masterpiece of his career.


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