Carlo Maratti was the leading artist in Rome in the late seventeenth century, and saw himself as the guardian of the classical tradition in painting. This drawing – probably a design for a commemorative engraving – depicts winged Time trampling Envy (gnawing her own heart) while holding aloft a portrait of the painter Pietro da Cortona. The message is that the artist's works would outlive the petty jealousies of his own day.

No. 139