Funeral Monument for Cardinal Favoriti

Object belonging

One's own

Category

Terracotta sculpture

City

Rome

Location

Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia

Specific location

Room 22

Inventory

PV 10353

Material and technique

Terracotta/ paint

Author

Filippo Carcani (1644-1688)

Dating

1682

Dimensions

40x59x20 cm.

Origin

Cavaceppi Collection (1799); Torlonia Collection (last quarter of 19th century); Pollak Collection (1947)

Image copyright

SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma

Short description

Monsignor Agostino Favoriti (1624-1682) was a leading figure of Roman cultural life during the pontificate of Alexander VII. His scholarly qualities were highly esteemed by the pope, who consulted him regularly when choosing mottoes for pontifical medals; Favoriti celebrated the colonnade and throne of St. Peter’s in two small poems, written in hexameters. It is not surprising then that the funeral monument of the Monsignor was imagined in Bernini’s style and that its creation was entrusted to the painter Ludovico Gimignani (1643-1697). The sculptures were not executed, though, by Gimignani, whose activity as a sculptor, to date, is not known; rather they were made by Filippo Carcani, a pupil of Ercole Ferrata and a collaborator of Bernini on several occasions. The genesis of the work can be reconstructed thanks to the terracotta model that previously belonged to Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, and came to the Palazzo Venezia museum in 1947, from the collection of Ludwig Pollak. The terracotta, whose surface is coated in a brown laquer, is in good condition; the loss of the cardinal’s right hand and the head of the putto at the base of the kneeling figure do not undermine the overall effect, nor the reading of the composition which maintains its strong Berninian legacy, with particular reference to the monument of the cardinal Domenico Pimentel in Santa Maria Sopra Minerva (after 1655).

Bibliography

A.E. Brinckmann, Barock-Bozzetti: Italienische Bildhauer, Frankfurt am Main 1923, I, p. 134, pl. 58; A. Santangelo (ed.), Museo di Palazzo Venezia. Catalogo delle sculture, Rome 1954, p. 89; M. G. Barberini (ed.), Sculture in terracotta del Barocco romano. Bozzetti e modelli del Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia, exh. cat., Rome 1991, p. 57; M. G. Barberini and C. Gasparri (ed.), Bartolomeo Cavaceppi scultore romano (1717-1799), exh. cat., Rome 1994, p. 127; O. Ferrari and S. Papaldo, Le sculture del Seicento a Roma, Rome 1999, p. 505; T. Montanari, 246. Modello per il Monumento del cardinal Agostino Favoriti, in A. Angelini, M. Butzek and B. Sani (eds.), Alessandro VII Chigi (1599 – 1667), il Papa senese di Roma Moderna, exh. cat., Siena 2000, pp.397-398