Head of an Old Man (Seneca)
- Object belonging
- One's own
- Category
- Terracotta sculpture
- City
- Rome
- Location
- Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia
- Specific location
- Room 20
- Inventory
- PV 10588
- Material and technique
- Terracotta
- Author
- after Guido Reni (1575-1642)
- Dating
- 1600-1603
- Dimensions
- 37 cm.
- Origin
- Cavaceppi Collection (1799); Domenico Ravajoli (1958)
- Image copyright
- SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma
Short description
Amongst the numerous terracottas that belonged to the sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi was a “fine head of an old man, looking upward” (Barberini 1994). After Giovanni Torlonia acquired the piece, together with the rest of Cavaceppi’s collection, all trace of the work was lost until it reappeared in 1958 when it was bought by the Italian State and given to the Palazzo Venezia museum. At that time the work was well known and was identified with the Head of Seneca, cited by Carlo Cesare Malvasia in the pages of Felsina pittrice dedicated to Guido Reni. Giving an overview of Reni’s sculptural work, Malvasia underlined how the artist’s skill marked him out in that discipline too. The work is cut off at the collarbone, emphasizing the strain of the old man, with his gaze turned upward, his mouth half-open and his neck straining. The skin is rendered in highly pictorial fashion, with numerous deep wrinkles, particularly around the nape of the neck where they pile up on top of each other. The terracotta is of undoubted quality, though there is a slight weakness in the modelling of the ears; nonetheless, the lack of documentary evidence and the still slim body of sculptural work that can be ascribed with certainty to Reni do not allow for a definite attribution of the piece, which could equally be derived from a work by Reni and executed by a Roman sculptor before the end of the 17th century.
Cristiano Giometti
