Apollo Driving the Chariot of the Rising Sun

Apollo Driving the Chariot of the Rising Sun

Luca Cambiaso

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This composition drawing depicts Apollo, god of the sun, driving the chariot of dawn seen in a relatively frontal view. The sheet is inscribed "sole oriente," to indicate the rising of the sun on the east. Since the ink of the inscription appears to be of the same hue as the darkest passages in the outlines of the drawing, this could be an iconographic inscription by the artist himself. A companion drawing, representing the chariot of Apollo (erroneously identified as the chariot of Phaeton), but seen in a view from behind to indicate the setting sun on the west, is inscribed in a complementary manner, "sole cadente." It sold at Sotheby's, London on May 21, 1963, lot 131. A copy of the "sole cadente" composition, incorrectly attributed to Antonio Tempesta, is in the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (Ancien fonds no. EBA 384). That design derives from an original by Luca Cambiaso as well. To judge from both its iconograph and its foreshortening, this composition was probably preparatory for a fresco on the ceiling of a salone in a palace.The squaring grid in red chalk over the figural drawing suggests a relatively monumental scale. The scenes thus likely refer to the sun god Apollo, and the moon goddess, Diana, driving their chariot across the skies. Cambiaso's associate Giovanni Battista Castello, il Bergamasco, frescoed the subject about 1552 on the walls of he Villa Giustiniani Cambiaso, Genoa. (Carmen C. Bambach, 2014)

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Apollo Driving the Chariot of the Rising SunApollo Driving the Chariot of the Rising SunApollo Driving the Chariot of the Rising SunApollo Driving the Chariot of the Rising SunApollo Driving the Chariot of the Rising Sun

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.