Portrait of Pietro Testa
Pietro Testa
after c. 1645
Medium
Brush and brown wash heightened with lead white (discolored), on tan laid paper, laid down on cream laid card
Dimensions
37.8 × 25.7 cm (14 15/16 × 10 1/8 in.)
Classification
ink or chalk wash
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
82527
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...