Landscape with Figures: The Silver Age 1624 - 1663

Francesco Allegrini created this pen and brown wash drawing, “Landscape with Figures: The Silver Age” in seventeenth-century Italy. The image presents an ideal vision of labor in the countryside. Classical culture and its artistic forms strongly influenced seventeenth-century Italian art. As we see here, artists frequently drew inspiration from classical literature for their subject matter. The "Silver Age" is part of the Greek myth of the Ages of Man, following the Golden Age and preceding the Bronze and Iron Ages. According to myth, this age was characterized by impiety: humans no longer revered the gods. Landscapes were not mere background for figure paintings, but vehicles of cultural meaning and symbolic value. As an art historian, my work is to analyze the social and cultural codes embedded in the image. This involves studying the symbolic language of its forms, the historical context of its production, and its engagement with the artistic conventions and institutions of its time.