Thursday, December 31, 2020

Eighteenth-Century Marbles Carved in Italy - I

Giuseppe Torretti
Bust of Democritus
1705
marble
Museo del Settecento Veneziano,
Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Once more, Democritus, arise on earth,
With cheerful wisdom and instructive mirth . . .

Attentive truth and nature to descry,
And pierce each scene with philosophic eye.
To thee were solemn toys or empty show,
The robes of pleasure and the veils of woe:
All aid the farce, and all thy mirth maintain,
Whose joys are causeless, or whose griefs are vain . . .

Unnumbered suppliants crowd preferment's gate,
Athirst for wealth, and burning to be great;
Delusive fortune hears th' incessant call,
They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall.

– Samuel Johnson, from The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749)

Bernardino Cametti
Diana the Huntress
ca. 1717-20
marble
Bode Museum, Berlin

Giovanni Battista Foggini
Posthumous Bust of Galileo Galilei
(tomb sculpture)
ca. 1722-25
marble
Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence

Antonio Corradini
Adonis
ca. 1723-25
marble
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Antonio Corradini
Personification of Honor
ca. 1730
marble
Bode Museum, Berlin

Antonio Corradini
Personification of Wealth
ca. 1730
marble
Bode Museum, Berlin

Girolamo Ticciati
Salome before Herod with the Head of John the Baptist
ca. 1732
marble relief
Museo dell' Opera del Duomo, Florence

Innocenzo Spinazzi
Personification of Faith
1781
marble
Chiesa di Santa Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, Florence

Antonio Canova
Dance of the Sons of Alcinous
ca. 1790-92
marble relief
Gallerie di Piazza Scala, Milan

Antonio Canova
Dance of the Sons of Alcinous (detail)
ca. 1790-92
marble relief
Gallerie di Piazza Scala, Milan

Antonio Canova
Briseis taken from Achilles and conveyed to Agamemnon
ca. 1787-90
marble relief
Gallerie di Piazza Scala, Milan

"The Iliad was published volume by volume, as the translation [by Alexander Pope] proceeded: the four first books appeared in 1715.  The expectation of this work was undoubtedly high, and every man who had connected his name with criticism, or poetry, was desirous of such intelligence as might enable him to talk upon the popular topic.  Halifax [Charles Montagu, first Earl of Halifax], who, by having been first a poet, and then a patron of poetry, had acquired the right of being a judge, was willing to hear some books while they were yet unpublished.  Of this rehearsal Pope afterwards gave the following account:

The famous Lord Halifax was rather a pretender to taste than really possessed of it.  When I had finished the two or three first books of my translation of the Iliad, that Lord desired to have the pleasure of hearing them read at his house.  Addison, Congreve, and Garth, were there at the reading.  In four or five places Lord Halifax stopped me very civilly, and with a speech each time, much of the same kind, "I beg your pardon, Mr. Pope; but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me.  Be so good as to mark the place, and consider it a little at your leisure.  I'm sure you can give it a little turn."  I returned from Lord Halifax's with Dr. Garth, in his chariot: and, as we were going along, was saying to the Doctor that my Lord had laid me under a good deal of difficulty by such loose and general observations; that I had been thinking over the passages almost ever since, and could not guess at what it was that offended his Lordship in either of them.  Garth laughed heartily at my embarrassment; said, I had not been long enough acquainted with Lord Halifax to know his way yet; that I need not puzzle myself about looking those places over and over, when I got home.  "All you need to do (says he) is to leave them just as they are; call on Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observations on those passages, and then read them to him as altered.  I have known him much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event."  I followed his advice; waited on Lord Halifax some time after; said, I hoped he would find his objections to those passages removed; read them to him exactly as they were at first; and his Lordship was extremely pleased with them, and cried out, "Ay, now they are perfectly right: nothing can be better."

– Samuel Johnson, from Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779)

Antonio Canova
Briseis taken from Achilles and conveyed to Agamemnon (detail)
ca. 1787-90
marble relief
Gallerie di Piazza Scala, Milan

Antonio Canova
Death of Priam
ca. 1787-90
marble relief
Gallerie di Piazza Scala, Milan

Antonio Canova
Death of Priam (detail)
ca. 1787-90
marble relief
Gallerie di Piazza Scala, Milan
 
Antonio Canova
Criton closing the eyes of Socrates
ca. 1790-92
marble relief
Gallerie di Piazza Scala, Milan

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

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Seventeenth-Century Marbles Carved in Italy - I

Stefano Maderno
St Cecilia
1600
marble
Basilica di Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome

Giulio dell' Agnolo del Moro
Risen Christ on Sepulchral Monument
to Procurator Andrea Dolfin

ca. 1605
marble
Chiesa di San Salvatore, Venice

Felice Palma
Jupiter casting a Thunderbolt
ca. 1612
marble
Villa di Poggio Imperiale, Florence

Andrea Bolgi
Monument to Laura Frangipani
1637
marble
Chiesa di San Francesco a Ripa Grande, Rome

Antonio Novelli
Risen Christ
ca. 1640-45
marble
Basilica di San Marco, Florence

Gianlorenzo Bernini
St Sebastian (detail)
1616-17
marble
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb

What word have you, interpreters, of men
Who in the tomb of heaven walk by night,
The darkened ghosts of our old comedy?
Do they believe they range the gusty cold,
With lanterns borne aloft to light the way,
Freemen of death, about and still about
To find whatever it is they seek?  Or does
That burial, pillared up each day as porte
And spiritous passage into nothingness,
Foretell each night the one abysmal night,
When the host shall no more wander, nor the light
Of the steadfast lanterns creep across the dark?
Make hue among the dark comedians,
Halloo them in the topmost distances
For answer from their icy Elysée.

– Wallace Stevens (1921)

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Bust of Francesco I d'Este
1650-51
marble
Palazzo dei Musei, Modena

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Angel holding Crown of Thorns
1668-69
marble
Basilica di Sant' Andrea delle Fratte, Rome

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Blessed Ludovica Alberoni
ca. 1671-75
marble
Chiesa di San Francesco a Ripa Grande, Rome

Anonymous Italian Artist
Madonna di Loreto
(Holy House transported by Angels and Cherubs)
17th century
marble relief
Duomo di Jesi

Ercole Ferrata
Portrait Bust of a Roman Ecclesiastic
ca. 1662-65
marble
Bode Museum, Berlin

Giovanni Camillo Cateni
St Luke painting the Portrait of the Virgin
1693
marble relief
Chiesa di San Gaetano, Florence

Giovanni Camillo Cateni
St Luke
1693
marble
Chiesa di San Gaetano, Florence

Giuseppe Piamontini
Preaching of St Mark
1693
marble relief
Chiesa di San Gaetano, Florence

Giuseppe Piamontini
Martyrdom of St Jude
1698
marble relief
Chiesa di San Gaetano, Florence

Monday, December 28, 2020

Baroque / Rococo Sculpture from Italy

Ercole Ferrata
St Scholastica
ca. 1655
stucco
Basilica di Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome

Ercole Ferrata
St Clare
ca. 1655
stucco
Basilica di Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome

Giovanni Martino Portogalli
Triton supporting Cornice
ca. 1705-1710
stucco
Palazzo Marucelli Fenzi, Florence

Giovanni Martino Portogalli
Nereid supporting Cornice
ca. 1705-1710
stucco
Palazzo Marucelli Fenzi, Florence

Angelo and Domenico Piò
Archangel Michael vanquishing Lucifer
ca. 1740-70
stucco
Chiesa di Sant' Agostino, Imola

Antonio Raggi
Bust of Apollo
before 1686
terracotta
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Giuseppe Ceracchi
Bust of Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte
ca. 1775
plaster
Collection of Franco Maria Ricci, Fontanellato

Giovanni Pozzo
Portrait of antiquarian Philipp von Stosch
1717
bronze medallion
Palazzo del Bargello, Florence

from Fizzle 6

"Old earth, no more lies, I've seen you, it was me, with my other's ravening eyes, too late. You'll be on me, it will be you, it will be me, it will be us, it was never us. It won't be long now, perhaps not tomorrow, nor the day after, but too late. Not long now, how I gaze on you, and what refusal, how you refuse me, you so refused.  . . .  For an instant I see the sky, the different skies, then they turn to faces, agonies, loves, the different loves, happiness too, yes, there was that too, unhappily. Moments of life, of mine too, among others, no denying, all said and done. Happiness, what happiness, but what deaths, what loves, I knew at the time, it was too late then. Ah to love at your last and see them at theirs, the last minute loved ones, and be happy, why ah, uncalled for. No but now, now, simply stay still, standing before a window, one hand on the wall, the other clutching your shirt, and see the sky, a long gaze, but no, gasps and spasms, a childhood sea, other skies, another body."

– Samuel Beckett (1976)

Giacomo Serpotta
Personification of Mercy
before 1732
stucco
Museo Diocesano di Palermo

Anonymous Italian Artist
Bust of a Man
17th century
colored wax
Collection of Franco Maria Ricci, Fontanellato

Anonymous Italian Artist
St Margaret
ca. 1640-50
colored wax relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Anonymous Italian Artist after Titian
Mary Magdalen
ca. 1650-75
colored wax relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Anonymous Italian Artist
Portrait of an Artist
late 18th century
colored wax relief mounted on painted glass
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Giovanni Francesco Pieri
Our Lady of Sorrows (Addolorata)
ca. 1725-70
colored wax
Collection of Franco Maria Ricci, Fontanellato

Giovanni Francesco Pieri
Holy Family with young St John the Baptist
1767
colored wax relief mounted on slate
Los Angeles County Museum of Art