Sophronia Enters the Palace of Aladin
Andrea Boscoli
1604–1606
- Medium
- Pen and brown ink, and brush and brown wash, over touches of red chalk, on cream laid paper, laid down on blue laid laminated card
- Dimensions
- 23.9 × 17.9 cm (9 7/16 × 7 1/16 in.)
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tags
brush and washdrawings (visual works)inkpen and ink drawingswashlaid paperprints and drawingpaperpaper (fiber product)
About
This is one of a number of drawings the artist made to illustrate scenes from Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Jerusalem Delivered (Gerusalemme liberata), first published in 1581. In order to avert a massacre, Sophronia (seen at left) enters the palace of the Muslim ruler of Jerusalem to plead her Christian people’s innocence. Andrea Boscoli’s style is characterized by a heavy use of wash, with a calligraphic line that delineates form with great subtlety. He juxtaposes a plunging perspective at left with the up-close palace colonnade at right to create a sense of negative-positive visual tension.
