The Florentine Duomo
1869–70 · Etching on ivory laid paper · Image: 23 × 15 cm (9 1/16 × 5 15/16 in.); Plate: 24 × 15.8 cm (9 1/2 × 6 1/4 in.); Sheet: 31.2 × 19.5 cm (12 5/16 × 7 11/16 in.)
Corot, The Florentine Duomo, 1869–70. Etching on ivory laid paper.
The Art Institute of Chicago · The Charles Deering Collection
How to look at a Corot
- Squint first. Count the masses. If you count more than four, squint harder.
- Find the lightest light (nearly always sky, or water reflecting sky) and the darkest dark (nearly always a foreground tree trunk or a shadow under foliage). Everything else sits between them.
- In the Italian graphite sheets, notice how much paper is untouched and how few lines describe a whole hill town. Then notice that every one of those lines is exactly placed.
- In the late charcoals, look for where an edge disappears: a trunk into shadow, a hill into sky. Those lost edges are the air.
- In the etchings, half-close your eyes until the lines vanish and only tones remain. That is what he was building.
Draw this
1 study of this work
