Allegorical Figure of Faith

Allegorical Figure of Faith

Giovanni Battista Gaulli (Il Baciccio)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Baciccio designed the frescoes in the vault of Santa Marta al Collegio Romano in Rome about 1672. The decoration was conceived as a series of three tondi, each framed by pendentives with personifications of Virtues. This study is for one of the allegorical figures, Faith. The drawing was identified by Maria Vittoria Brugnoli (1966: see here 'References') as Gaulli's study for the allegorical figure of Faith that appears in a triangular section of the vaulting in the church of Santa Marta al Collegio Romano in Rome. Gaulli was responsible for the overall design of the frescoes in the vault, but only executed the central tondo with Saint Martha in Glory and the Virtues in the four surrounding pendentives (ca. 1672). The two other tondos and the remaining eight pendentives, including that with Faith, are said to have been painted by Paolo Albertoni and Girolamo Troppa (see Enggass 1964, pp. 146-147). Visual evidence that Gaulli was responsible for the design of the whole ceiling was supplied by Maria Vittoria Brugnoli, who published a sheet formerly in a private collection in Vienna with sketches by Gaulli for all three of the circular compositions. Other drawings by Gaulli for the Santa Marta decorations are in the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin (Dreyer 1969, no. 78, p1. 41; no. 79). A similar figure of Faith occurs in Gaulli's fresco in the vault of the church of Santa Marta al Collegio Romano in Rome.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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