David and Bathsheba

Giuseppe Passeri · n.d.

Medium

Pen and brown ink, with brush and brown wash, heightened with white gouache, over black chalk on cream laid paper, partially laid down on ivory laid paper

Original size

18.3 × 21.8 cm (7 1/4 × 8 5/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

David and Bathsheba is a striking compositional study that balances narrative tension with the fluid, luminous quality typical of the finest Italian Baroque draftsmanship. Giuseppe Passeri (1654–1714) trained under Carlo Maratti in Rome and absorbed the grand classical tradition of the Roman school, bringing to his work a refined elegance and a mastery of light and shadow. This piece demonstrates his skill in layered drawing media — the black chalk underdrawing gives structure, the brown wash builds depth, and the white gouache highlights lift figures into almost sculptural relief. The result is a work that reads less like a preparatory sketch and more like a finished composition in its own right. Passeri is also remembered beyond his paintings: he compiled one of the most valuable biographical sources on seventeenth-century Roman artists, the Vite de' pittori, scultori ed architetti, which remains a key reference for art historians today. Because the original is a work on paper, translating it to oil allows the reproduction to convey the warmth and tonal richness of the composition in a way that prints simply cannot — the brushwork honours the layered technique Passeri himself employed, giving the scene the physical presence it deserves on a wall.