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Apollo Driving the Chariot of the Sun

A work made of pen and black ink, with brush and brown wash, heightened with white opaque watercolor, with incising, on cream laid paper prepared with a light brown wash, laid down on thick laid paper.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • A work made of pen and black ink, with brush and brown wash, heightened with white opaque watercolor, with incising, on cream laid paper prepared with a light brown wash, laid down on thick laid paper.

Date:

1544/45

Artist:

Lelio Orsi
Italian, 1508 or 1511–1587

About this artwork

As the heroic sun god Apollo drives his four-horse chariot (the semicircle of the sun directly behind him), Aurora, goddess of the dawn, strews flowers in his path, announcing his—and the new day’s—arrival. Lelio Orsi’s drawing is a final preparatory sketch for an illusionistic outdoor fresco (now lost) on the clock tower in the central square of the northern Italian city of Reggio Emilia.

Orsi was so successful in suggesting the god’s powerful forward thrust that Apollo looks as if he is about to leap from his chariot and out of the picture plane. Orsi derived his heroic, classicizing graphic style primarily from Michelangelo.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Prints and Drawings

Artist

Lelio Orsi

Title

Apollo Driving the Chariot of the Sun

Place

Italy (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1544–1545

Medium

Pen and black ink, with brush and brown wash, heightened with white opaque watercolor, with incising, on cream laid paper prepared with a light brown wash, laid down on thick laid paper

Dimensions

Primary support: 24.7 × 33.4 cm (9 3/4 × 13 3/16 in.); Secondary support: 32.2 × 40.9 cm (12 11/16 × 16 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray

Reference Number

2019.855

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/244910/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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