Allegory of Spring
Sheet: 20 3/8 × 28 9/16 inches (51.75 × 72.55 cm)
An Italian Panorama: The Romance of Ruins, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, November 10, 2009-May 16, 2010, no cat., as Allegory of Spring.
An Italian Panorama: The Romance of Ruins, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, July 19, 2017-January 14, 2018, no cat., as Allegory of Spring.
In this elaborate work, the winged cupid holding a torch in the center shows that spring is the season of love, while in the sky, the arrival of springtime is heralded by Apollo in his chariot. Testa was an eccentric artist who ended his life by drowning himself in the river Tiber at Rome. This composition is more abstruse than usual for Testa’s time and more in the mannerist taste of the previous century, which delighted in complexity.
Robert L. (b. 1952) and Barbara E. (née Klugman, b. 1958) Bloch, Shawnee Mission, KS, by July 7, 1981;
Given by Robert L. and Barbara E. Bloch to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1981.
Adam Bartsch, Le peintre-graveur, vol. 19, Peintres ou dessinateurs italiens: Maitres du dix-septième siècle, première partie (Vienna: Chez Pierre Mechetti, ci-devant Charles, 1819), no. 36, p. 227, as La saison du Printemps, représentée d’une manière poétique.
Paolo Bellini, L’opera incisa di Pietro Testa (Venice: Neri Pozza, 1976), no. 30 II/II.
George L. McKenna, Prints, 1460-1995 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 307, as Allegory of Spring.
