Supporting museums Art we've helped buy An Allegory of Life and Death (study)
An Allegory of Life and Death (study) An Allegory of Life and Death (study)

© Ashmolean Museum


An Allegory of Life and Death (study)

Battista Franco

Art Funded
1937
Dimensions
20 cm
Presented by
Sir Kenneth Clark through The Art Fund
One of 5 drawings donated by Sir Kenneth Clark to the Ashmolean in 1937.

Kenneth Clark was Keeper of Fine Arts at the Ashmolean from 1931-33. He went on to become the youngest person to be appointed as director of the National Gallery where he remained until after the Second World War in 1945.

Pen & ink

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Apples in a Bag
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An Allegory of Life and Death (study)
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An Allegory of Justice and Vanity
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Album of portrait drawings
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Album of drawings
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Abraham and Hagar Surprised by Sarah
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A Seated Bodhisattva
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A Ruined House
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A Portrait of Mrs Fuseli
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A Mourning Knight
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A Man leading a Horse
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A Head of a Woman
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A Farmyard with a Well
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Nominally inspired by Lucretius' De rerum natura, Piero di Cosimo's The Forest Fire takes its scientific subject and embellishes it with fantastical creatures from the artist's imagination: Bulls, bears, lions and deer-like creatures with human faces all flee wearily from a fire.

Rubens' portrait of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel dates from about 1629. The Earl was a great collector, and Rubens had painted the earl's wife a few years earlier on a visit to Antwerp. This drawing in pen and ink with a chalk base is unusually informal, reflecting perhaps the comfortable relationship between artist and patron.

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