The prodigal son seated at the base of a tree among swine, his gaze directed upward and his hands folded at his chest, surrounded by a wooded landscape and a pigsty
Pietro Testa
ca. 1640–50
Medium
Etching
Dimensions
sheet: 8 1/8 x 12 in. (20.6 x 30.5 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Bequest of Phyllis Massar, 2011
Accession Number
2012.136.423
Tags
MenPigsTrees
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...