This unpublished statuette, which came from the Wurts collection, depicts a plump, nude angel. As the movement of the body and the windswept hair suggest, the angel is in flight, and its wings are white but also coloured with blue and red. The work was, in all probability, part of a nativity scene, where it would have been hung on a hook, as indicated by the small hole on the back. The style of the angel is characteristic of Neapolitan sculpture of the 18th century (as seen, for example, in the many putti on the main altar of the Nunziatella church in Naples, carved in wood by Giuseppe Sanmartino or his followers, Giuseppe Picano: cfr. E. Catello, Giuseppe Sanmartino, 1720-1793, Naples 2004, pp. 90 and 184) and it is similar to another angel in the Palazzo Venezia collection, inv. no. PV 9217/298. Although three fingers are missing on the right hand, the work is in good condition.

 

Grazia Maria Fachechi