An allegorical design with Fame crowning Homer

Previously considered to be by Carlo Maratti (1625-1710), this drawings is in fact by one of his most prominent pupils, the Sicilian Giacinto Calandrucci. Boldly executed in flowing pen and ink over red chalk it is a preparatory study for the engraved frontispiece of Giovanni Pietro Bellori’s celebrated collection of images of Classical poets and philosophers Veterum illustrium philosophorum poetarum rhetorum imagines, published in Rome in 1685 in homage to Queen Christina of Sweden. Executed by the Flemish printmaker Jacques Blondeau (1655-1698), the final engraving reproduces Calandrucci’s design in reverse (fig. 1). It is signed at the bottom 'Hyacinthus Calandrucciis invent e delin' and followed by a Latin inscription that praises the virtue of human knowledge. Including quotations from Raphael's School of Athens in the Vatican, the lively ensemble conceived by Calandrucci presents Homer in the background, crowned by Fame, accompanied at left by Socrates with allegories of Rhetoric, Geometry and Grammar, seated in the foreground. The sheet marks a crucial addition to Calandrucci’s corpus of drawings and designs for engravings, which was first reconstructed by Dieter Graf in 1986 (Die Handzeichnungen von Giacinto Calandrucci, Düsseldorf, 1986). We are grateful to Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò and Dario Beccarini for confirming the attribution to Calandrucci based on a digital image.

Fig. 1. Jacques Blondeau after Giacinto Calandrucci, frontispiece for Giovanni Pietro Bellori's Veterum illustrium philosophorum poetarum rhetorum imagines (1685).