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Allegory of Winter and Summer

Image credit: Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives

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Notes

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This allegory by Giovanni Battista Pittoni the younger, an important exponent of the Venetian Rococo style, has been variously interpreted. Pittoni probably turned to Cesare Ripa's iconographic handbook 'Iconologia' for his allegorical figures. Summer is personified as a young woman, and Winter as an old man warming his hands over a brazier. Summer gestures to the spirit of the Dawn, at the top right, whose urn of water provides the dew droplets of summer and the frost in the winter. The figures may have also been intended to represent Youth and Old Age.

Bristol Museum & Art Gallery

Bristol

Title

Allegory of Winter and Summer

Date

c.1720

Medium

oil on canvas

Measurements

H 146 x W 118 cm

Accession number

K2910

Acquisition method

purchased with the assistance of the Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund, 1964

Work type

Painting

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