 |
| Luca Cambiaso Apollo driving the chariot of the rising sun 1550s drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
In Frescoes of the Veneto (New York : Vendome Press, 2009) Filippo Pedrocco lists some of the patterns he has observed on the decorated walls and ceilings of early modern palaces. "Frescoes generally appear within painted faux-architectural structures, their themes ranging from celebration of a family's accomplishments and some of its most distinctive members to mythological and historical scenes. ... The connecting thread among such disparate works is the extremely high quality of the painting."
 |
| Orazio Samacchini Study for the decoration of a vault ca. 1570 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Paolo Veronese Study for a Figure of Moderation 16th century drawing British Museum |
 |
| Federico Zuccaro Time rescuing Truth from Calumny 16th century drawing Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
 |
| Angelo Michele Colonna and Agostino Mitelli Ceiling design for Buen Retiro Palace, Madrid ca. 1659 oil on canvas Prado, Madrid |
 |
| Pietro da Cortona Landing of the Trojans at the mouth of the Tiber 1651-54 ceiling fresco Palazzo Pamphilij, Rome |
 |
| Francesco Maffei Design for a ceiling panel 17th century drawing Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
 |
| Carlo Maratta Virtue crowned by Honor ca. 1670-76 drawing for a pendentive Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Antoine Coypel Figure of Renown 17th century drawing Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
17th-century ceiling-painters, according to Steffi Roettgen, "freed themselves of the constraints of painted architecture to claim the ceiling as the exclusive playground of a world of figures with its own rules. What mattered were distance from the viewer, spatial relationships within the composition, the play of light and shadow, and atmospheric and coloristic perspective. Their renunciation of the organizing framework of painted architecture was only suitable, however, for scenes taking place in the heavenly sphere, indicated by banks of cloud and spiral or concentric configurations." – from Italian Frescoes : the Baroque Era (New York : Abbeville Press, 2007)
 |
| Antoine Coypel Composition with ascending figures 17th century drawing Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
 |
| Antoine Dieu Fame bearing a portrait of Louis XIV 17th century drawing Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
"Angels do not need bodies for their own sake but for ours – coming into our human world and speaking with human beings, they give us a foretaste of that spiritual intercommunication which we look forward to having with them in a future life." – St Thomas Aquinas, quoted in Baroques by Giovanni Careri (Princeton University Press, 2003)
 |
| attributed to Benedetto Luti Fall of Satan 17th century drawing Morgan Library, New York |
 |
| Benedetto Luti Bound Satyr 1693 drawing Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
 |
| Louis Laguerre Study for The Creation of Pandora ca. 1720 oil sketch Victoria and Albert Museum, London |
 |
| Corrado Giaquinto Birth of the Sun & Triumph of Bacchus ca. 1761 oil on canvas Prado, Madrid |
 |
| Giambattista Tiepolo Cherub with-Wreath of Lilies ca. 1767-69 fragment, oil on canvas Prado, Madrid |
"He [Tiepolo] embraced Sebastiano Ricci's luminosity, taking up again Veronese's sun-filled fields and rediscovering the cinquecento technique of painting canvases and frescoes over white primer that allows light to shine through." – Daniela Tarabra in European Art of the Eighteenth Century (Getty Museum, 2006)