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Giovanni Battista Bertani

Double-Sided Sheet: Study for Hercules Victorious over the Hydra (recto); Study of Hercules, a Roman Soldier’s Head, and Ornament (verso), 1557 - 1558

Now On View

Description

Maker

Title

Double-Sided Sheet: Study for Hercules Victorious over the Hydra (recto); Study of Hercules, a Roman Soldier’s Head, and Ornament (verso)

Year

1557 - 1558

Medium

Pen and ink with traces of red chalk on laid paper

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Supports

Dimensions

45.7 x 30.5 cm (18 x 12 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Inscribed in pen and ink on verso: "Cinquantacinque camise de M. / vinti de ferig.o / quarantacinque camise de Madona"

Type

Credit

Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund

Object Number

65.078

Projects & Publications

Publications

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Drawing Closer

March 12 - September 4, 2022

One of Hercules’s mythical 12 labors was the killing of a many-headed monster called the Hydra. Here, the Greek hero stands at rest, towering above the headless body of the creature. A preparatory study for a print, this drawing already contains the final idea for the print’s main figure as well as a number of peripheral sketches, doodles, and even fragments of writing on the other side, visible through the thin sheet. The broad range of finish—from Hercules’s highly defined musculature to the barely suggested marginalia—is typical of sketching sheets used to develop compositional ideas.

The Brilliant Line

September 18, 2009 - January 3, 2010

Giovanni Battista Bertani made this drawing in preparation for a print engraved by Giorgio Ghisi, which served as the frontispiece for Bertani's 1558 treatise, Gli oscuri e dificili passi dell’opera ionica di Vitruvio, a commentary on the Roman architect Vitruvius’s passage on the Ionic volute (1st century BCE). Bertani’s drawing does not retain any signs of transfer, whether pricking or tracing, which would indicate a direct correlation between the two, but it is clearly a working stage of the composition. The figure of Hercules is the most final, its precise hatching serving as a model for engraved marks, while other elements, such as the sitting female figure, leg, and standing female body at right, are more preliminary in both form and execution.

Design and Description

January 27 - April 9, 2006

This drawing served as the design for an engraving executed by Giorgio Ghisi. The double-sided sheet gives insight into Bertani’s working method. On the reverse, a preliminary sketch for Hercules takes form, accompanied by sketches of a Roman soldier’s head, an ornament, and a violin. The artist also wrote notes in Italian, one of which reads “forty-five chemises of the Madonna (or My Lady)” (quarantacinque camise de Madonna), referring perhaps to a task to complete for his patroness. On this side, Bertani drew a more fully rendered version of Hercules with sure, reinforced contour lines and delicate, feathery hatching. As if not wanting to waste any paper, the artist sketched additional studies of limbs and the back of a woman in drapery.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is Double-Sided Sheet: Study for Hercules Victorious over the Hydra (recto); Study of Hercules, a Roman Soldier’s Head, and Ornament (verso) with the accession number of 65.078. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.