Madonna and Child
- Object belonging
- One's own
- Category
- Terracotta sculpture
- City
- Rome
- Location
- Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia
- Specific location
- Room 21
- Inventory
- PV 01651
- Material and technique
- Terracotta
- Author
- Roman School, 17th century
- Dating
- c. 1675-1700
- Dimensions
- 28 cm.
- Origin
- Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo (1920)
- Image copyright
- SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma
Short description
This small tondo was originally mounted on a wooden background, which has preserved it from possible damage: it is in fact in very good condition and there are no clear cracks or losses. The relief is rather shallow and the figures are defined with vibrant strokes of the knife, while a wooden stick has been used to shape the background and the garments, creating a lively chiaroscuro. The Madonna, on the right of the composition, lowers her head to look at the Child, who is lying sideways on her lap and leaning on a round cushion; on the left, two angels smile as they watch over him. Donated by the Museo di Castello in 1920, the work was studied for the first time by Santangelo, who recognized in the technique the “usual manner of Ercole Ferrata”, in the period in which the artist, from Pellio Intelvi, was working on the fine figure of Faith for the monument of Cardinal Lelio Falconieri in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini (1665-1668), one model of which is also held at the Palazzo Venezia museum (PV 2556). This same reading was upheld several years later by Valentino Martinelli in the catalogue for the exhibition Seicento Europeo (1956). More recently, only Ferrari and Papaldo have looked again at the terracotta, limiting themselves, though, to relating the opinions of previous authors. The small-format sculpture of Ercole Ferrata is rarely so swiftly executed and undefined, usually showing instead a good level of finesse. So the work ought rather to be attributed to a sculptor active in Rome in the generation after Ferrata, between the end of the 17th century and the first two decades of the following century, such as Giuseppe Mazzuoli (1644-1725) or, alternatively, Francesco Moderati (1680-c.1729).
Cristiano Giometti
Bibliography
A. Santangelo (ed.), Museo di Palazzo Venezia. Catalogo delle sculture, Roma 1954, pp. 90-91; Il Seicento Europeo, exh. cat., Roma 1956, p. 263; O. Ferrari and S. Papaldo, Le sculture del Seicento a Roma, Roma 1999, p.506