The Birth of the Virgin

Object belonging

One's own

Category

Terracotta sculpture

City

Rome

Location

Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia

Specific location

Room 22

Inventory

PV 14031

Material and technique

Terracotta

Author

Luigi Valadier (1726-1785) and Filippo della Valle (1698-1768)

Dating

c. 1765

Dimensions

68x111 cm.

Origin

Gorga Collection (1948)

Image copyright

SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma

Short description

In 1765, Luigi Valadier, the most famous and esteemed silversmith in Rome, received a prestigious commission from Monsignor Francesco Testa, the archbishop of Monreale, to complete the design and decoration of the main altar in the city’s cathedral. It was a demanding project, above all for the great amount of decoration that needed to be done: there were three large frontal reliefs, five smaller ones for the altar step with scenes from the life of the Virgin (1765-1769), six saints each 120 cm tall (1770-1773), not to mention various consoles, mirrors, cornices and other architectural elements. Amongst the most complex elements of the whole structure was certainly the large frontal relief depicting The Birth of the Virgin, the preparatory model for which is held at Palazzo Venezia. The terracotta, which came from the collection of the opera singer Evan Gorga, was discovered in a fragmentary state in 1990 by Maria Giulia Barberini, who recognized the link with the Monreale work; follwing restoration to piece the work together, it was exhibited at the show L’oro di Valadier in Rome in 1997. Discounting the figurative parts that are now lost – the heads and one arm of the two maidservants – the composition matches the level of detail in the finished work, and such congruity would attest to the fact that this model was executed to be fused. However, as Winter suggested (1997), the quality of the sculptural layout indicates it may have been executed by an important sculptor like Filippo della Valle, whose daughter Caterina married Valadier in 1756. It seems, in fact, certain now that the Florentine artist, in the later years of his life, also worked as a supplier of maquettes for the studio of his son-in-law, and some stylistic motifs find echoes in his most noted work.

Cristiano Giometti

Bibliography

J. Winter, La nascita della Vergine, in A. Gonzales-Palacios (ed.), L'oro di Valadier. Un genio nella Roma del Settecento, exh. cat., Roma 1997, p. 163