The Idolatry of Solomon (1622–23): Art, History and Details

The Idolatry of Solomon (1622–23) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Pietro da Cortona (Italian, 1596–1669).

The work and its context

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

Pietro da Cortona was one of the most successful and active fresco painters in Rome in the mid-1600s. This drawing is a preparatory sheet—highly worked-up with many different mediums—for one of the artist's six frescoes portraying the story of Solomon commissioned by the Roman nobleman Asdrubale Mattei (1556-1638) for the gallery of his Palazzo Mattei di Giove. Reflecting the artist's as well as his patron's interest in classical antiquity, Cortona combined a classical relief-like composition with specific references to Roman objects and architectural elements in the composition. The subject represents a foolish episode from Solomon's life, when he was lured into the worship of idols by the "foreign" women with whom he kept company.

Object facts

• Title: The Idolatry of Solomon
• Date: 1622–23
• Creator attribution: Pietro da Cortona (Italian, 1596–1669)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Pen and brown ink, point of brush and black ink, brush and brown wash, and white and blue gouache, framing lines in brown ink
• Dimensions: Sheet: 24.8 x 43.3 cm (9 3/4 x 17 1/16 in.); Secondary Support: 25.5 x 44.1 cm (10 1/16 x 17 3/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1987.142

A detail from the museum

Pietro da Cortona completed this drawing and the six frescoes related to it for a prominent patron and palazzo in Rome when he was just 27 years old.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Christie, Manson & Woods. Fine Old Master Drawings. London: 1987.
• "Museum Acquisitions." Drawing 10, no. 1 (May-June 1988): 17-18.
• "The Year in Review for 1987." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 75, no. 2 (February 1988): 31-71.

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.