Allegory of Summer (?)

Object belonging

One's own

Category

Terracotta sculpture

City

Rome

Location

Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia

Specific location

Room 26

Inventory

PV 10377

Material and technique

Terracotta/ patina

Author

Genoese school

Dating

First half 18th century

Dimensions

42x21x18.5 cm

Origin

Gorga Collection (1948)

Image copyright

SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma

Short description

The terracotta, which is finished with a brown-yellowish varnish, depicts a female figure, precariously seated on a large console. The woman, wearing a robe that is loosely fastened with a strap, holds a bundle of foliage in her right hand, which has been understood as a sheaf of wheat, leading her to be identified as an Allegory of summer. In the relevant entry in his Iconologia, Ripa states that “classical painters used to depict Summer as Ceres dressed as a Matron with a sheaf of wheat, poppies and other attributes”. Usually the ears of wheat circle the hair but here they cannot be identified clearly, since the moulding, which is rather hurried in some areas, is not particularly well defined. On the back, for example, the base of the console is only roughly sketched out, giving the impression of a rock-like surface and hinting at its probable final setting as part of a fountain. The work has long been attributed to an anonymous Florentine sculptor from the first half of the eighteenth century; there are greater similarities, though, with Genoese sculpture of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries than with the Florentine culture of the same period.

Cristiano Giometti 

Bibliography

Unpublished