Putti Carrying the Cross (recto); Studies of a Hand (verso)

Gian Lorenzo Berninis Putti Carrying the Cross from 1672-75 is a charcoal and black chalk drawing with stumping on ivory laid paper that exemplifies the sculptors extraordinary draftsmanship and reveals the conceptual thinking behind some of his most ambitious sculptural projects. The recto depicts a group of putti, the chubby male children who populate Baroque religious art, struggling to carry a large cross, a subject that combines the theological symbolism of Christs Passion with the playful energy that Bernini brought to even the most serious religious subjects. The verso contains studies of a hand, the kind of anatomical detail study that Bernini used to work out the specific problems of pose and gesture that his sculptures demanded. The combination of a compositional study on the recto and a detail study on the verso is characteristic of Berninis working method, in which the whole and the part were developed simultaneously rather than sequentially. The charcoal and black chalk medium, with its capacity for stumping and erasing, allows Bernini to model the putti with a sculptural three-dimensionality that approaches the effect of relief carving, while the stumping technique creates the soft, atmospheric shadows that distinguish his drawings from the harder outlines of his contemporaries. The years 1672-75 place this drawing in the period of Berninis work on the Altar of the Blessed Sacrament in Saint Peters, and the putti carrying the cross may be a study for one of the angelic figures that populate his late religious sculptures.

Berninis drawings are essential documents for understanding the creative process of the greatest sculptor of the Baroque period, revealing the conceptual thinking and anatomical problem-solving that preceded the carving of marble. His putti drawings were particularly influential on the development of Baroque decorative sculpture and the Rococo angel tradition that followed.

A double-sided drawing by Bernini depicting putti carrying the Cross on the recto and anatomical hand studies on the verso, demonstrating the Baroque masters sculptural draftsmanship and his simultaneous working method for compositional and detail problems.