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| Pietro da Cortona Chariot of Venus 1622 tempera on canvas Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome |
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| Pietro da Cortona Roman Sacrifice (study for lost painting) ca. 1630 drawing Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Pietro da Cortona Venus as Huntress appears to Aeneas 1631 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
"Pietro was born in Cortona in 1596, and after 1612 studied under the Florentine master Andrea Commodi whom he soon followed to Rome. After Commodi's return to Florence in 1614 Pietro worked under Baccio Ciarpi, but his essential artistic education lay in his own close study of the famous works of art in Rome. . . . The study of Polidoro da Caravaggio, and perhaps especially the whole school of those antiquity-oriented masters at the end of the High Renaissance, led Pietro at an early age toward the classical tradition, which he studied closely in all of its varied manifestations: statues, relief sculpture, sarcophagi, urns, medallions, etc. . . . It was above all the style of antique relief sculpture which so decisively imbued the artistic perception of the young Pietro; in the Tuscan tradition, he had a native inclination toward linear pictorial definition, and this influence was to determine the development of his art over a very extended period. He found in the art of antiquity not only the individual elements for his representations of life in ancient times, which are indeed masterful from an archaeological perspective; he also discovered there a formal standard which lent a degree of stability to the florid and sensual power of his imagination."
– Hermann Voss, from Baroque Painting in Rome (1925), revised and translated by Thomas Pelzel (San Francisco: Alan Wofsy, 1997)
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| Pietro da Cortona Battle of Alexander and Darius ca. 1644-50 oil on canvas Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome |
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| attributed to Pietro da Cortona Adventus of Hadrian (after Roman relief) before 1669 drawing Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| Pietro da Cortona Romulus and Remus sheltered by Faustulus ca. 1643 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| Pietro da Cortona Castor and Pollux (design for lunette fresco) ca. 1642-44 drawing Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Pietro da Cortona Abduction of Sabine Women 1630-31 oil on canvas Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome |
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| Pietro da Cortona Europa and the Bull before 1669 drawing National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Pietro da Cortona Caesar granting Cleopatra the Throne of Egypt ca. 1637 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon |
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| Pietro da Cortona Death of Cleopatra ca. 1625 drawing Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Pietro da Cortona Age of Bronze ca. 1640 oil on canvas Dulwich Picture Gallery, London |
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| Pietro da Cortona Bacchante before 1669 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Pietro da Cortona after Raphael Triumph of Galatea ca. 1623 oil on canvas Accademia di San Luca, Rome |