The Apostles Gathered Around the Tomb of the Virgin (c. 1594): Art, History and Details

The Apostles Gathered Around the Tomb of the Virgin (c. 1594) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Camillo Procaccini (Italian, 1546–1629).

The work and its context

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

Camillo Procaccini was a significant figure in the artistic activity of Bologna and Milan at the beginning of the Catholic Counter Reformation. This drawing is a preparatory work related to large oil painting still in situ (in its originally intended location), in the apse of the Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, Italy. Part of a program depicting the assumption of the Virgin, the drawing shows the apostles at the empty tomb of the Virgin, exclaiming with emotion at the miracle of her ascension to heaven. Procaccini’s iconographic program aligned with current reforms in Catholic imagery that placed emphasis on articles of faith and lives of the saints, often through miracles.

Object facts

• Title: The Apostles Gathered Around the Tomb of the Virgin
• Date: c. 1594
• Creator attribution: Camillo Procaccini (Italian, 1546–1629)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Pen and ink and brush and wash with white heightening on paper prepared with reddish-brown wash
• Dimensions: Sheet: 17.7 x 42.5 cm (6 15/16 x 16 3/4 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2024.65

A detail from the museum

The warm, reddish color of this paper was created with a colored ink wash in order to create a middle tone upon which the artist could draw with lighter and darker tones, creating a study of dark and light, or chiaroscuro.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• New York, Colnaghi, Master Drawings, 1989, no.7
• Stanford University, Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Classic Taste: Drawings and Decorative Arts from the Collection of Horace Brock, 2000.

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.