Lelio Orsi
Italian, 1508 or 1511–1587
Apollo Driving the Chariot of the Sun
INV-2449
Lelio Orsi
Italian, 1508 or 1511–15871544/45
Apollo Driving the Chariot of the Sun
Lelio Orsi Italian, 1508 or 1511–1587 →drawings (visual works)paper
Date
1544/45
Medium
Pen and black ink, with brush and brown wash, heightened with white opaque watercolor, with incising, on cream laid paper prepared with a light brown wash, laid down on thick laid paper
Dimensions
Primary support: 24.7 × 33.4 cm (9 3/4 × 13 3/16 in.); Secondary support: 32.2 × 40.9 cm (12 11/16 × 16 1/8 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray
As the heroic sun god Apollo drives his four-horse chariot (the semicircle of the sun directly behind him), Aurora, goddess of the dawn, strews flowers in his path, announcing his—and the new day’s—arrival. Lelio Orsi’s drawing is a final preparatory sketch for an illusionistic outdoor fresco (now lost) on the clock tower in the central square of the northern Italian city of Reggio Emilia.
Orsi was so successful in suggesting the god’s powerful forward thrust that Apollo looks as if he is about to leap from his chariot and out of the picture plane. Orsi derived his heroic, classicizing graphic style primarily from Michelangelo.
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