Allegory of History, with Time

Vittorio Maria Bigari

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The allegorical figure of the History is represented as a winged figure looking backward as she writes on a tablet supported by Time. In a letter of November 16, 1987, Professor Renato Roli kindly assured the Museum that the old annotation on the verso of the drawing is accurate. Thus, the drawing is a study for one of the allegories painted in chiaroscuro on the walls of a room on the ground floor of the Casa Bovi Tacconi in Bologna, now used as a photographic studio. Most of the wall frescoes have disappeared under layers of whitewash. Only two allegories have survived, although heavily repainted, and Roli points out that in one of these chiaroscuri, facial types and framing motifs are comparable to the Museum's drawing. Bigari's ceiling fresco, representing Apollo crowning a figure of Painting, is intact (Roli 1977, pis. 69a and 69b). A drawing in pen and ink with watercolor for the ceiling fresco and part of its illustionistic architectural framework is in a private collection in Bologna (R. Roli, Settecento Emiliano, 1979, no. 178, fig. 260).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art