Seated Male Figure (a Shepherd?)
- Object belonging
- One's own
- Category
- Terracotta sculpture
- City
- Rome
- Location
- Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia
- Specific location
- Room 24
- Inventory
- PV 10391
- Material and technique
- Terracotta/ patina
- Author
- Giuseppe Mazza (1653-1741)
- Dating
- 1676
- Dimensions
- 36.5x28x28 cm.
- Origin
- Gorga Collection (1948)
- Image copyright
- SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma
Short description
This small terracotta depicts a nude man, seated and covered only with a drape around the waist. The figure’s position is somewhat strained: his legs are wide apart and slightly bent, while his torso recoils as if surprised or in self-defence. Unfortunately we do not know what unforeseen event the figure might have been witness to and the loss of almost the whole right arm, which one imagines would have been raised, does not help in understanding the scene. The surface of the work is covered by the residue of a dark varnish that was applied, at some point, to simulate the effect of a fine bronze, but this coating has not obscured the date and signature engraved on the rear of the rock: “1676 G. M. Mazza”. The work, which was acquired by Palazzo Venezia together with other items from the collection of the opera singer Evan Gorga, was published by Santangelo (1954) who attributed it, confidently, to Giuseppe Maria Mazza, having identified the signature. Santangelo’s attribution has not been disputed, and recently Sinagra, in the biographical entry on the artist in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (2009), reconfirmed the attribution. Its date, so early in the career of the Bolognese sculptor, indicates that the terracotta is a type of academic exercise and not intended to be translated into a larger work or made using other material.
Cristiano Giometti
