Allegorical Figure (c. 1635): Art, History and Details

Allegorical Figure (c. 1635) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Bernardo Strozzi (Italian, 1581?-1644).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The Genoese painter Bernardo Strozzi drew this female figure in preparation for one of his major oil paintings, also in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art (1929.133). Recent scholarship has convincingly identified the subject as Minerva. The Roman goddess of war has put aside her armor for more contemplative pursuits; her upward gaze—as if seeking inspiration—recalls her other associations with wisdom, eloquence, and the arts. The figure is one of a number of single female figures associated with intellectual and artistic pursuits made by Strozzi in the 1630s when he lived and worked in Venice. Such works appealed to his learned patrons in northern Italy.

Object facts

• Title: Allegorical Figure
• Date: c. 1635
• Creator attribution: Bernardo Strozzi (Italian, 1581?-1644)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black chalk with red chalk
• Dimensions: Matted: 55.7 x 40.5 cm (21 15/16 x 15 15/16 in.); Sheet: 37.3 x 26.2 cm (14 11/16 x 10 5/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1953.626

A detail from the museum

Drawings by Bernardo Strozzi are exceedingly scarce, especially full worked-up preparatory drawings such as this study for Minerva.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Jane S., ed. The Dictionary of Art, vol. 29. New York: Grove, 1996.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Venetian Tradition: Catalogue of the Exhibition. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1956.
• "Accessions of American and Canadian Museums." Art Quarterly 19, no. 3 (Autumn 1956): 302-306.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.