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 modelled in terracotta by Pinelli and 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. Two decidedly classical sculptures stand out from this nucleus of works inspired by episodes taken from the lives of bandits or traditions in the Roman campagna. The first is a rather liberal interpretation of the head of the Farnese Hercules, an important work of classical sculpture today in the Museo Archeologico in Naples (inv. 6001). Compared to the original Pinelli execution of the curls of the beard and the hair is rather hurried and gives Hercules an expression that is almost naïve. The work was initially attributed to the Roman artist by Mariani (1931) and was then ascribed to Jacopo Sansovino by Federico Hermanin (1948) before being attributed by Santangelo (1954) to an academician from the early 19th century.

Cristiano Giometti