Bellona 1510 - 1563

Curator: We’re standing before Andrea Schiavone’s “Bellona,” a drawing created sometime between 1510 and 1563. It is currently held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The work primarily employs colored pencil, ink, and wash on laid paper. Editor: It strikes me as a set of variations on a theme. Each figure carries a somber tone, but I find the lower register—those versions with the bare-chested Bellona—quite disturbing, almost raw in their presentation of power. Curator: Indeed. Schiavone here explores the representation of Bellona, the Roman goddess of war, presenting different iconographic depictions within one frame. Observe how he plays with the draped and undraped form. In the upper vignettes, she’s concealed. In the others, a display of the masculine form is very apparent in her build. Editor: The fact that they're placed together enhances that visual discourse between the covered and revealed goddess. Note how the weapons and helmet transform into loaded signifiers about masculine war, rather than inherent aspects of war itself. The lower images of her body—particularly her torso—becomes almost a phallic symbol itself, signifying the most visceral components of war and aggression. Curator: Absolutely. The materiality further reinforces your reading. The sketch-like quality adds an immediacy and rawness, while the strategic deployment of shadow accentuates key formal elements, thereby shaping her psychological presence and impact. And you are correct—it isn't just the object that creates the iconography, but it is the layering of multiple ideas and contexts that creates new significance here. Editor: In observing Schiavone's compositional techniques, it has created, at least for me, a renewed appreciation for the artist's awareness of Bellona's significance as an agent within patriarchal societies. Curator: And on my part, an amplified engagement with Schiavone's artistic ability when using basic materials and construction as a way of revealing complexity in thought and production.