Gloria

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FROM THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART’S CATALOG

This print is based on a drawing that Rosso Fiorentino made as part of a design for a fresco in François I’s chateau at Fontainebleau in France. A personified Gloria (or Fame) holds a trumpet in each hand, a symbol of victory, while standing atop a globe, signifying dominance over time and death. Although a clear inspiration, the powerful muscular and sculptural quality of Michelangelo’s nudes are in this figure transformed into a distorted, excessively elongated torso. Such a body was not the result of drawing from a live model but instead derived from the artist’s imagination.

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