Allegory of America c. late 1690s

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini traveled widely, painting dazzling, effervescent decorations for fashionable palaces and villas across northern Europe. His drawings are free and spirited, as demonstrated in this loosely executed study. The figure is the continent of America - - North and South still grouped together - - personified as a nearly naked woman, holding a bow and arrow, with a quiver at her waist, symbols easily recognized by Pellegrini's contemporaries. The decapitated head at America's foot alludes to the cannibalism presumably practiced in the New World. Artists have long sought drawings by their predecessors. At the lower right, we see where the English painter Sir Joshua Reynolds stamped his initials as a sign of ownership.