Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Head of Vengeance
Pierre Paul Prud'hon (French, 1758-1823)
c. 1804
- Medium
- Black and white chalk, with stumping, and with traces of blue chalk, on blue laid paper (faded to tan)
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 50.8 × 39.9 cm (20 × 15 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Arthur Heun Fund
- 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
A study for the figure of Divine Vengeance in Prud’hon’s celebrated paintingJustice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime (1808), the head of Vengeance, who pursues Crime as an agent of Justice, brilliantly reflects the artist’s stated aim for the painting: “to give a commotion to the soul.” Although the drawing’s blue paper has faded almost completely to gray, the work’s expressive power remains intact.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
