Bartolomeo Pinelli’s reputation derives principally from his vast number of pictorial works inspired by Rome and from his tantalizing evocations of the city in numerous watercolours, drawings and prints. Just as important was his, albeit less numerous, production of terracottas, with which Pinelli worked from the start of his career, making around 30 small-scale sculptures, usually signed and dated. Oreste Raggi, the most important of Pinelli’s biographers, noted that the artist “made, in his final days, many small groups out of clay, depicting modern dress, which he sold, as usual, for an extremely modest price. […] His method of sculpting is pleasing because his spirit, his passion and his sure touch run through every work”. Pinelli had intended to make one hundred sculptures but only completed 29 and in 1834 he executed a series of engravings (groups were modelled in terracotta by Pinelli and then etched by the artist too). A significant nucleus of these works came to Palazzo Venezia at two different points: 6 sculptures were given by the Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo in 1920, while 4 others, which formed part of the collection of Evangelista Gorga, were acquired by the state in 1948. Scenes inspired by bandits re-occur very frequently, characters that Pinelli wished to study close-up, and spent a period of time in forests to follow first-hand bandits’ incursions, as well as more intimate and private moments. Bandits, mythologised in poems and popular tales, had long hair, wore jackets and velvet gilets, and tall hats with narrow brims. Pinelli depicted them dressed in this fashion, sometimes bent double in the grip of some illness, or during a fight (PV 10394), or even while fleeing as a group, dragging a wounded companion (PV 1183).

Cristiano Giometti