Juno on Her Chariot Drawn by Peacocks Sending Iris to the Kingdom of Sleep

Date

ca. 1655

Creator

This drawing was made in preparation for a cycle of paintings decorating the bedroom ceiling of Queen Anne of Austria’s winter apartments at the Louvre. The subject of Juno, the queen of the ancient gods, was an apt allegory for the Queen of France, who had survived France’s civil war, the Fronde...The drawing is squared for transfer, a technique artists used to transfer a design from a small sheet of paper, where the composition has been determined, to a larger support (either canvas or a wall of fresco). After creating a grid on the painting surface with the same number of squares but in a larger scale, assistants copied each section exactly, thereby ensuring the accuracy of the master’s design in the final product. from Snay, The Epic and the Intimate: French Drawings from the John D. Reilly Collection (Notre Dame, 2011)