Four allegories of the hours of day and night, after Raphael

Michelangelo Maestri was an artist active in Rome between the 18th and the 19th Centuries. He is mainly known for his gouaches inspired by the frescoes of Renaissance artists such as Raphael and Giulio Romano. Maestri also based his compositions on the recently discovered wall decorations in Pompeii. His drawings, which are often executed over etched outline, were popular among Grand Tourists visiting Rome and Southern Italy.

These four gouaches belong to a series, The Hours of Day and Night, which included twelve compositions (six hours of the day and six hours of the night). The inscriptions reveal that Maestri based his drawings on originals by Raphael and his pupils; the artist freely reinterpreted figures from the fresco decorations in the Villa Farnesina and the Vatican.