2-742-949 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Temperance, 1628-1630. As many of the sheets in this exhibition show, artists typically made numerous drawings when working on large projects. This particular compositional design was made on three separate sheets of paper, all with irregular edges cut and pasted onto a larger sheet. It shows the process Domenichino used to explore different composi-tional possibilities for this subject, making changes to the design by cutting and pasting sheets together. The final work is part of the decoration of the Church of San Carlo ai Catinari, Rome, depicting the four cardinal virtues: Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude.