Temperance (1628–30): Art, History and Details

Temperance (1628–30) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Domenichino (Italian, 1581–1641).

The work and its context

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

The gridded pattern superimposed over the figures in this scene indicates that this drawing was used a preparatory study for one of Domenichino’s frescoes depicting the four cardinal virtues inside the dome of the Church of San Carlo ai Catinari in Rome. This technique—called squaring—was a common method used in seventeenth-century Italy to transfer a design from one surface to another. Domenichino prepared the design on three separate sheets of paper, all with irregular edges cut and pasted onto a larger sheet. At the top, the allegorical figure of Temperance, one of four cardinal virtues, reclines gracefully on a cloud. She holds a palm branch in her left hand and extends her right out toward a hovering putto in the upper left corner. The changes made to Temperance’s right hand and the presence of two camel heads (only one appears in the finished fresco) reveal the artist’s process for working out the poses and placements of the figures in his composition.

Object facts

• Title: Temperance
• Date: 1628–30
• Creator attribution: Domenichino (Italian, 1581–1641)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black chalk heightened with white chalk, squared with black chalk
• Dimensions: Sheet: 59.2 x 43.7 cm (23 5/16 x 17 3/16 in.); Secondary Support: 61.2 x 45.7 cm (24 1/8 x 18 in.); Tertiary Support: 61.2 x 45.7 cm (24 1/8 x 18 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1964.445

A detail from the museum

Despite having carefully prepared the composition for his fresco of Temperance with this and other drawings, Domenichino left Rome before completing the painting. It was later finished by one of his pupils.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. "Year in Review." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 52, no. 9 (November 1965): 124-157.
• Francis, Henry. "Domenichino: Preparatory Drawing of Temperance." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 52, no. 10 (December 1965): 174-177.
• Spear, Richard E. "Some Domenichino Cartoons." Master Drawings 5, no. 2 (Summer 1967): 144-158 + 209-217.

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.