| Summary: | Although he was an international celebrity in his own lifetime, Pietro da Cortona’s reputation plummeted soon after his death, due in large part to changing standards of taste in the eighteenth century that were hostile to the extravagances of the Baroque style that he epitomized. By the nineteenth century it is difficult to find a positive evaluation of Cortona in any art-theoretical literature. Newly discovered material, however, reveals that a fable featuring the artist was widespread in children’s literature throughout the century, written by some of the leading historians and children’s authors in Europe and America. This article examines how elements of artistic biography were appropriated to serve a burgeoning genre of literature intended to shape children’s character and conduct, and explores what these stories can tell us about Cortona’s popular, as opposed to academic, reception in the centuries following his own.
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