Mars Sending Gorgon to Slay the Arts
Pietro Testa
n.d.
Medium
Pen and brown ink, over black chalk, on tan laid paper
Dimensions
36.5 × 25.3 cm (14 3/8 × 10 in.)
Classification
pen and ink drawings
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
4205
About the Artist
Pietro Testa · 1612–1650
Pietro Testa was born in Lucca in 1612 and, in accordance with the conventions of Italian artistic training, made his way to Rome while still young. There he studied under two of the leading painters of the early seventeenth century: Domenichino, from whom he absorbed a taste for classical restraint and narrative clarity, and Pietro da Cortona, whose more exuberant Baroque manner offered a contras...