30 PIETRO DA CORTONA In 1658­61, the great Italian Baroque sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Pietro Berrettini) constructed a new church in honor of the then recently canonized Saint Thomas of Italian, 1596­1669 Villanova adjacent to the papal palace at Castelgandolfo, the pope's summer residence Christ on the Cross with the outside Rome. Cortona's elaborate, finished study is a design for the oval picture he Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Saint John painted, probably in the year of the building's completion, for the richly decorated high altar of the church, executed and embellished by Bernini's pupil Antonio Raggi. Pen and brown ink, with gray­brown The composition of the altarpiece differs from the drawing in only a few respects. wash, heightened with white bodycolor over black chalk, on light­ The sheet is executed in Cortona's characteristically tugged manner, with extensive brown paper; squared in black chalk, use of white heightening. The opaqueness of the white allowed him to conceal some of with an oval drawn in red chalk his earlier attempts at drawing the figures, especially the Saint John, which is bordered 40.3 x 26.5 cm (15 x 10 7/16 in.) Cat. Ill, no.35; 92.GB.79 by a penumbra of white that covers earlier positions for the right and left arms, the head, and the left leg. The drawing is squared for transfer (see no. 9). Cortona was a great architect and the most important painter of the Italian High Baroque style in Rome. He is best known for his famous illusionistic ceiling decoration in the gran salone (great hall) of the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, which he completed in 1639. The profusion of figures, the brilliance of color, and the overall complexity of that composition, with its interlocking scenes around a central opening to the sky, epitomize the exuberance of the High Baroque. ITALIAN SCHOOL 41