Studies of a Figure Bending Over, Two Putti, and an Arm (recto); Rest on the Flight into Egypt (verso) 1596 - 1597

Cesare Rossetti made this red chalk drawing, Studies of a Figure Bending Over, Two Putti, and an Arm, around the turn of the 17th century. Rossetti was working within a context dominated by powerful institutions, the Catholic Church first among them. The image shows a focus on classical idealism, inherited from the Renaissance. Here, religious and mythological subjects were used to legitimize power structures in Italian society. Artists like Rossetti helped to create a visual language that reinforced the authority of the church and the state, who were often one and the same. The putti in this drawing embody that classical idealism. Rossetti was interested in how the body could express different kinds of emotion, whether devotion, or the kind of human suffering represented by the bending figure. By studying drawings like this, and archival sources from the period, we can come to a deeper understanding of the complex interplay between art and society. Art is never produced in a vacuum, and it always reflects the values and beliefs of its time.