Bowdoin College Museum of Art

The Visitation

Artist: Pietro Antonio de Pietri (Italian, 1663-1716)

Medium: pen and brown ink and light brown wash over black chalk on paper

Dimensions: 10 3/8 in. x 7 15/16 in. (26.4 cm. x 20.16 cm.)

Credit Line: Bequest of the Honorable James Bowdoin III

Accession Number: 1811.24

• James Bowdoin III( Collector, Boston) - 1811.
• Bowdoin College Museum of Art( Museum, Brunswick, Maine) 1811- . Bequest

• Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College
  • Bowdoin College Museum of Art. ( 5/17/1985 - 7/7/1985)
  • Clark Art Institute. ( 9/14/1985 - 10/27/1985)
  • University of Kansas. ( 1/19/1986 - 3/2/1986)
  • Art Gallery of Ontario. ( 5/17/1986 - 6/29/1986)
• Drawing on Basics
  • Bowdoin College Museum of Art. ( 10/14/1993 - 12/19/1993)

Type: catalogue
Author: Henry Johnson
Document Title: Catalogue of the Bowdoin College Art Collections
Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine
Reference: no. 33
Section Title: Pt. I, The Bowdoin Drawings
Date: 1885

Type: catalogue
Author: Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Document Title: Bowdoin Museum of Fine Arts, Walker Art Building
Edition: 4th
Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine
Reference: no. 33
Publisher: Bowdoin College
Section Title: Descriptive Catalogue of the . . . 
Date: 1930

Type: exhibition catalogue
Author: David P. Becker
Document Title: Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College
Publ. Place: Brunswick, Maine
Location: pp. 160-161
Reference: no. 75 (illus.)
Publisher: Bowdoin College
Date: 1985
			
		

The Visitation is an example of de' Pietri's characteristic pen and wash style, as is Flight into Egypt (BCMA 1811.25). These two are more resolved and fluid than studies such as The Assumption (BCMA 1811.26), though even here the artist has ventured two alternatives for the head of the mother at lower left. This sheet may be compared with two studies for the Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple, one in the Metropolitan¹ and the other in Chicago.² Both of the latter sheets are larger and have been further heightened with white gouache. No painted versions by de' Pietri of the Visitation are known. The visit by the Virgin just after the Annunciation to her cousin Elizabeth (who was pregnant with St. John the Baptist) is related in Luke 1:39-56.

1. Inv. no. 1980.122, repr. in Bean and Turčić 1982, p. 316, no. App.15.

2. Inv. no. 1972.323, repr. in Joachim and McCullagh 1979, no. 93, pl. 100.

3. Waterhouse 1976, p. 104.

Commentary credited to David P. Becker (or not otherwise captioned) appeared in his catalogue Old Master Drawings at Bowdoin College (Brunswick: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1985).