Landscape with a Man Leaning on a Bale (c. 1640): Art, History and Details

Landscape with a Man Leaning on a Bale (c. 1640) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Guercino (Italian, 1591–1666).

The work and its context

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

The tradition of landscape as an independent subject in Italian art stretches back to the 1500s and was flourishing in the 1600s, when Guercino made this drawing. Guercino, however, rarely painted pure landscape, preferring to explore this genre in the more intimate medium of drawing. This sheet, with its fluid pen lines and unified composition enlivened by small figures, is a typical example of his ability to integrate picturesque motifs into an asymmetrical, balanced whole.

Object facts

• Title: Landscape with a Man Leaning on a Bale
• Date: c. 1640
• Creator attribution: Guercino (Italian, 1591–1666)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown ink
• Dimensions: Sheet: 18.5 x 26.3 cm (7 5/16 x 10 3/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2000.23

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Recent Acquisitions Press Release,” June 19, 2000, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.

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.