Woman Walking to the Right 

Giovanni Baglione created this drawing, "Woman Walking to the Right," using black and white chalk on paper. Baglione was working in Rome during the Baroque era, a period marked by dramatic and dynamic compositions that served the Catholic Church’s efforts to re-establish its power. In this drawing, we see a woman cloaked in drapery, her posture suggesting both movement and a certain weariness. Her clothing obscures her individual identity, yet it also speaks to the prescribed roles and expectations of women in Baglione's time. Is this woman walking towards something, or away? The slight tension in her outstretched arm, the way her head is slightly bowed, invites us to imagine her story. Baglione's drawing exists in the tension between the universal and the particular, inviting us to reflect on the burdens and resilience of women then, and now.