Detail Study for The Assumption of St. Agnes

Giovanni Battista Gaulli · 1670/90

Medium

Pen and brown ink, with brush and brown wash, heightened with white gouache, over black chalk, on tan laid paper

Original size

26 × 39.1 cm (10 1/4 × 15 7/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

This preparatory study by Giovanni Battista Gaulli crackles with the drama and devotional intensity that defined the Roman High Baroque — figures ascending, drapery alive with motion, light breaking through shadow. Gaulli, known widely as Baciccio, was among the most celebrated fresco painters in seventeenth-century Rome, best known for his breathtaking ceiling in the Church of the Gesù. Works like this study reveal how deeply he thought through his compositions before committing them to plaster or canvas. The combination of pen and brown ink with white gouache heightening on toned paper was a standard Old Master technique for capturing both the structure of a figure and the drama of light in a single sheet — and Gaulli wielded it with remarkable confidence. The swelling, upward movement of the figure reflects his close relationship with Bernini, whose influence on Gaulli's sense of theatrical grace is well documented. The Art Institute of Chicago holds this study as part of its broader collection of Italian Baroque drawings, where it stands as evidence of the careful intellectual labour behind grand devotional art. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates the warmth and luminosity of the original onto canvas, preserving the expressive energy of Gaulli's line and the spiritual lift at the heart of the composition.