Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino, Atlas

1646, oil on canvas, 127 x 101 cm.; inventory number 1148

The work depicts Atlas, the titan condemned by Zeus to hold up the celestial vault on his shoulders, for all eternity. Guercino painted this canvas in 1646 for Don Lorenzo de' Medici, as attested by the payment registered in the artist's own accounts-book. Together with the figure of Atlas, the same Medici cardinal commissioned another painting, showing Endymion asleep, with a telescope across his knees. The figures of Atlas and Endymion, symbolising astronomy and astrology, constitute a posthumous homage to Galileo Galilei, the illustrious scientist protected by Grand-Duke Cosimo II dei Medici, the brother of the patron Don Lorenzo.