Today is the feast day of St. Gregory the Great. If you can't make it to his church in Rome any time soon to see the gorgeous ceiling fresco of The Trinity with Saints Gregory and Romuald completed by Placido Costanzi in 1727 (on the left), then maybe you can run by the Toledo Museum of Art and see the only known modello for the work, made the year before. And you can see it up close!Usually right across the gallery from this work is David's reduced autograph copy (I disagree with the scholars who think it's by a student) of the great Oath of the Horatii. If David did indeed paint this, he painted it in Rome, in the same space that had been Costanzi's studio. How wonderful, then, that these two works painted many years apart but quite literally in the same light and ended up in the same American art museum. Way to go, TMA.
