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| Ercole Ferrata Venus de' Medici (Ferrata created and added arms to Roman marble statue, 1st century BC) ca. 1660 marble La Tribuna degli Uffizi, Florence |
The Venus de' Medici in Florence remains one of the most famous statues in the world, and its status in earlier centuries was even higher, when it occupied a position of generalized worship similar to that occupied by the Mona Lisa today (and this long before the Mona Lisa was famous at all, unseen until the nineteenth century beyond a small circle of French courtiers). When the Venus went on display, originally in Rome, in the seventeenth century, the cultured public was deeply reluctant to admire antique statues as they had actually been unearthed, in ruinous condition. Professional sculptors like Ercole Ferrata (1610-1686), Francesco Maria Nocchieri (active, 1660-1680), Giulio Cartari (ca. 1641-1699) and the earlier Ippolito Buzzi (1562-1634) subsisted largely on their work as "restorers" of these excavated Roman marbles. Standard practice involved combining fragments of unrelated sculptures, as well as attaching new-carved heads, limbs, and attributes. The majority of these objects are still displayed today as they were transformed in the seventeenth century, often with no acknowledgment that what the viewer is invited to contemplate could be described more accurately as a piece of Baroque Italian art than as an authentic ancient artifact. Ferrata invented and added the arms to the Venus de'Medici in about 1660. He and a colleague radically "improved" another Venus (directly below) in about 1680 for the Spanish Ambassador in Rome. During the 1670s Ferrata and Francesco Maria Nocchieri both worked steadily for Queen Christina of Sweden, then resident in Rome. She amassed a large collection of excavated Roman marbles for display in her palace, and they were uniformly made to look as if they had survived the previous 1,500 years intact and undamaged. The bulk of her collection eventually passed to the Spanish crown, and is on view today at the Prado in Madrid. In a few cases the Ferrata / Nocchieri / Cartari contributions have been removed, but most of the pieces are still to be seen with their fantasy-embellishments in place, just as the Baroque connoisseur wished to see them.
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| Ercole Ferrata and Giulio Cartari Venus (headless Roman torso, AD 80-90, "restored" for Gaspar Méndez de Haro, 7th Marquis of Carpio) ca. 1680 marble Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Ercole Ferrata and Francesco Maria Nocchieri Crouching Venus (headless Roman torso, 2nd century AD, "restored" and embellished for Queen Christina of Sweden) ca. 1670-80 marble Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Ercole Ferrata and Francesco Maria Nocchieri Augustus Togatus (two unrelated Roman fragments, late 1st century AD, combined and embellished for Queen Christina) ca. 1670-80 marble Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Ercole Ferrata and Francesco Maria Nocchieri Hercules (headless Roman fragment, AD 140-160, "restored" for Queen Christina) ca. 1670-80 marble Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Ercole Ferrata and Francesco Maria Nocchieri Fortuna (headless Roman fragment, AD 150-200, "restored" for Queen Christina) ca. 1670-80 marble Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Ercole Ferrata and Francesco Maria Nocchieri Sleeping Ariadne (Roman fragment, AD 150-175, "restored" and reconfigured for Queen Christina) ca. 1670-80 marble Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Ercole Ferrata and Francesco Maria Nocchieri The Muse Polyhymnia (upper body, Roman torso, AD-150-175, lower body, newly carved and added for Queen Christina, the two halves now separated, with baroque head removed) ca. 1670-80 marble Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Ancient Rome Venus (baroque head and limbs added for Queen Christina, ca. 1670, untypically removed without explanation by Museo del Prado) AD 150 marble Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Ippolito Buzzi Apollo Kitharoidos (version 1) (headless Roman torso, 2nd century AD, "restored" and reconfigured by Buzzi) ca. 1620-30 marble Museo Nazionale Romano di Palazzo Altemps, Rome |
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| Ippolito Buzzi Apollo Kitharoidos (version 2) (headless Roman torso, 2nd century AD, "restored" and reconfigured by Buzzi) ca. 1620-30 marble Museo Nazionale Romano di Palazzo Altemps, Rome |
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| Ippolito Buzzi Venus of Knidos (headless Roman torso "restored" and reconfigured by Buzzi) ca. 1620-30 marble Museo Nazionale Romano di Palazzo Altemps, Rome |
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| Ippolito Buzzi Cupid and Psyche (two unrelated Roman male torsos combined, extended, reconfigured and redefined by Buzzi) ca. 1620-30 marble Museo Nazionale Romano di Palazzo Altemps, Rome |
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| Ippolito Buzzi Castor and Pollux (headless Roman fragments, 10 BC, extended and combined with additional antique fragments by Buzzi) ca. 1625-30 marble Museo del Prado, Madrid |
The biggest curatorial puzzle is not why so few pieces are returned to their excavated state as broken fragments, but rather why museums in choosing to retain the radical 17th-century interference continue to describe such pieces as authentic antiquities.