The Triumph of the Virtuous Artist on Parnassus

This is the last and most grandiose of a series of allegorical self-portraits. At the center of the composition, the Artist, escorted by Divine Love and crowned by Fame, avoids the Vices, at the lower right, and approaches the Muses and Venus, on the left. Testa was a painter of intellectual inclination and close association with a prestigious circle of humanists in Baroque Rome. He was also a prolific inventor and etcher of erudite subjects in a very controlled, purely linear, and rather archaeological style.