A Pagan Sacrifice

Prints and Drawings

c. 1645–50

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione
Italian, 1609-1664

This monumental painting on paper, formerly in the collection of Lord Kenneth Clark, is a superb example of Castiglione’s mature style. It demonstrates not only the impact of artists he encountered in Rome, such as Rubens and Poussin, but also the audacious technical innovations he initiated, painting fluently with pigment and oil on paper. The obscure pagan subject was undoubtedly aimed at a select and erudite Roman audience.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione
Title: A Pagan Sacrifice
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.: 1645–1650
Medium: Oil paint on tan laid paper, laid down on cream wove paper
Dimensions: 57.6 × 42.5 cm (22 11/16 × 16 3/4 in.)
Credit Line: Clarence Buckingham Collection
Reference Number: 1968.77
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/28813/manifest.json

“Art and Auction: The Year at Sotheby’s and Parke-Benet, 1966-67” (New York, 1967), pp. 105 and 108 (ill.).
Harold Joachim, Italian Drawings of the 18th and 19th Centuries and Spanish Drawings of the 17th Through 19th Centuries (Chicago, 1980), no. 4C11.
Shelley Perlove and George S. Keyes (editors).
Seventeenth-Century European Drawings in Midwestern Collections (University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), pp. 22, 52 no. 14, 53 (ill.)

New York, Charles E. Slatkin Gallery, “Master Drawings,” 1967.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione: Master Draughtsman of the Italian Baroque,” September 17-November 28, 1971, cat. 21.
St. Louis Art Museum, “Italian Drawings Selected from Mid-Western Collections,” February 23-April 16, 1972, cat. 38.
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Italian Drawings in The Art Institute of Chicago,” 1979-1980, cat. 72, by Harold Joachim and Suzanne Folds McCullagh; also traveled to the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Miami, Fla., Center for the Fine Arts, “In Quest of Excellence,” October 27, 1983-January 29, 1984.
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Great Drawings from The Art Institute of Chicago: The Harold Joachim Years 1958-1983,” July 24-September 30, 1985, pp. 36-37, cat. 7 (ill.), cat. by Martha Tedeschi.

Sir William Drake (died 1890), London [Lugt 736]. E. Parsons, London, by 1928 [according to Philadelphia 1971] Lord Kenneth Clark, Saltwood; sold, Sotheby’s, London, April 20, 1967, Clark sale, lot 11, to Mrs. Slatkin, London [according addenda in sales catalogue]; sold by Charles Slatkin Galleries, New York, to the Art Institute, 1968.

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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.

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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.