Beni Culturali Soprintendenza Speciale per il Patrimonio Storico Artistico ed Etnoantropologico per il Polo Museale della città di Roma

Madonna and Child

Vergine con il Bambino e angeli - Virgin and Child with Angels
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

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Page created 15/01/2009, last modify 15/11/2010