The Italian painter and architect Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669) was one of the main representatives of the first full flowering of the high baroque style in Italy.

Pietro Berrettini, known as Pietro da Cortona from his birthplace of Cortona, a little town in Tuscany, was born on Nov. 1, 1596. In Rome, where he went in his teens, the paintings of Annibale Carracci and ancient Roman sculpture especially influenced him. With the encouragement of the learned archeologist Cassiano dal Pozzo he studied, as his contemporary G. B. Passeri tells us, "the statues and bas-reliefs of the ancient Romans, especially various columns, urns, and vases on which were represented sacrifices, bacchic revels, and other pagan ceremonies."

From such ancient sculpture Cortona usually selected those with the most dynamic compositions for his paintings. In his Rape of the Sabines (ca. 1629) the figures are arranged on planes parallel to the surface, almost as...