Allegory of Simplicity
- Object belonging
- One's own
- Category
- Terracotta sculpture
- City
- Rome
- Location
- Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia
- Specific location
- Room 26
- Inventory
- PV 00167
- Material and technique
- Terracotta/paint/wood/carving/gilding
- Author
- Giuseppe Raffaelli (1686-1731)
- Dating
- 1696-1698 ca.
- Dimensions
- 50 x 25.5x 14.3 cm
- Origin
- Ugo Jandolo (1919)
- Image copyright
- SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma
Short description
When this fine work was acquired by Palazzo Venezia in 1919, it was thought to be a depiction of the Madonna by Pietro Bracci. Hermanin was the first to publish the work in 1948, attributing it to Antonio Raggi, while Santangelo believed it to be the work of an artist from outside of Rome from the last quarter of the 17th century. In 1960 Antonia Nava Cellini compared the fragment with the statue of Simplicity, made for one of the niches of the nave of Santa Maria Maddalena in Rome. Once this link was established between the model and its finished version, the sculptor remained to be identified. Mortari discovered a document, dated 22 November 1969, that revealed that the marble statue of Simplicity was sculpted by Giuseppe Raffaelli. Raffaelli would have completed the work before the end of 1698, and it can be assumed that the present model would have been created during the early stages of the commission. Her head is modestly bowed and her gaze is lowered in a style less reminiscent of Duquesnoy’s Saint Susanna and more of the many Madonnas in depictions of the Annunciation painted at the time by Carlo Maratti and transformed into sculptures by Camillo Rusconi.
Cristiano Giometti