Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Seventeenth-Century Marbles Carved in Italy - II

Ippolito Buzzi
Portrait Bust of Luisa Deti
(mother of Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini)
ca. 1605
marble
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ippolito Buzzi
Portrait Bust of Luisa Deti
(mother of Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini)
ca. 1605
marble
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Stefano Maderno
Nicodemus with the body of Christ
1605
marble relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Gianlorenzo Bernini
St Sebastian
1616-17
marble statuette
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Gianlorenzo Bernini
St Longinus
1639
colossal marble statue
St Peter's Basilica, Rome

Andrea Bolgi
St Helena with the True Cross
1646
colossal marble statue
St-Peter's-Basilica-Rome

attributed to Orfeo Boselli
Bust of Plato
ca. 1635-40
marble
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

"White marble" wrote Orfeo Boselli in the 1650s, "is, and always will be, the most suitable material one could possibly find for making statues, and I am convinced that it was for this purpose that Nature created it, pure, shining, workable and enduring." 

But if this was the ideal that nature intended, in practice she did not always achieve it.  Boselli himself admitted that, if the greatest delight of a sculptor was to have a good piece of marble, the worst trouble that could befall him was to have a bad piece, and in comparing the sculptor to the painter he pointed to the hard lot of the former, who so often had to contend with marble in which nature had placed stains, cracks, faults, impurities, iron veins and other disasters that would try the patience of a saint. 

– Jennifer Montagu, from Roman Baroque Sculpture: The Industry of Art (Yale University Press, 1989)

Ercole Ferrata under direction of Francesco Borromini
Angel with Shield
(Sepulchral Monument to Cardinal Lelio Falconieri)
ca. 1650
marble
Basilica di San Giovanni Battista dei Fiorentini, Rome

Ercole Ferrata under direction of Gianlorenzo Bernini
Angel
(supporting altarpiece painting, The Visitation by Giovanni Maria Morandi)
ca. 1657-59
marble
Basilica di Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome

Ercole Ferrata under direction of Gianlorenzo Bernini
Angel
(supporting altarpiece painting, The Visitation by Giovanni Maria Morandi)
ca. 1657-59
marble
Basilica di Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome

Ercole Ferrata and Cosimo Fancelli
St Bernardino of Siena
ca. 1660
marble
Chiesa di Santa Maria della Pace, Rome

Ercole Ferrata
Martyrdom of St Agnes
ca. 1660-64
marble
Chiesa di Sant' Agnese in Agone, Rome

Ercole Ferrata under direction of Gianlorenzo Bernini
Angel with Cross
ca. 1670
marble
Ponte Sant' Angelo, Rome

Giovanni Camillo Cateni
Bust of Neptune
1690
marble
Villa Medicea di Cerreto Guidi

Giuseppe Piamontini
Bust of Cleopatra
1690
marble
Villa Medicea di Cerreto Guidi