3889 - Detail of a corner of a ceiling design.

Detail of a corner of a ceiling design. Bolognese, c. 1700. Pen in brown, washed in brown, with watercolors in green, red, and blue, outlined with delicate brown pen lines, on laid paper. 19.4 x 21 cm. Provenance: ON Collection, not listed in Lugt. Larger and smaller brown spots; creases smoothed out. The designed illusionistic architecture opens up to the open sky in the corner and in the center of the ceiling. The underside of the balustrade is adorned with genies and floral ornaments. Similar illusionistic ceiling decorations were created in the 17th century by the Bolognese architectural and perspective painter Agostino Mitelli (1609–1660) (see his drawings in the Kunstbibliothek Berlin), and this decorative style continued to be cultivated in Bologna in the first half of the 18th century.