(This is a short English version of a longer French blog entry, where interested readers will find the French text accompanying the drawing, references and footnotes)
The drawing Cat. 27 shows a dynamic scene of unmounted horses racing through the streets of Rome for the carnival. An owl is riding one of the horses; on the left, Time is busy painting the portrait of the bird.
Continuer la lecture de « A horse-riding owl, the Sun King and Charles Le Brun: killing two birds with one stone ? »