Saint Charles Borromeo Entering the Town of Pavia: Design for a Wall Decoration
Cesare Nebbia (Italian, 1536–1614)
c. 1604
- Medium
- Pen and brown ink, with brush and brown wash, over traces of graphite, on cream laid paper, laid down on buff card
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- Primary support: 15.3 × 31 cm (6 1/16 × 12 1/4 in.); Secondary support: 15.7 × 31.3 cm (6 3/16 × 12 3/8 in.)
- Culture
- Italy
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of John A. Bross in memory of Louise Smith Bross
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Cardinal Charles Borromeo (1538–1584) was one of the major figures of the Counter-Reformation in late-16th-century Rome. To mark and promote Borromeo’s beatification, in 1602, Nebbia was commissioned to decorate the ceiling and walls of the Collegio Borromeo, in Pavia, in his honor. While this drawing may have been intended for a never-completed fresco on the north or south wall, the two other drawings on view nearby were used for monochrome frescos. Borromeo’s case progressed to the Congregation of Rites in 1604, and he was officially canonized by Pope Paul V in 1610.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
