The Game of Morra

Object belonging

One's own

Category

Terracotta sculpture

City

Rome

Location

Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia

Specific location

Store at the Museo di Roma in Palazzo Braschi

Inventory

PV 1188

Material and technique

Terracotta

Author

Bartolomeo Pinelli (1781-1835)

Dating

1834

Dimensions

42x46x30 cm.

Origin

From Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo (1920)

Image copyright

SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma

Short description

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. The composition of The Game of Morra is very lively: the two figures – almost certainly bandits – one seen from behind, the other front on, have removed their jackets to have greater freedom of movement and are gesticulating in animated fashion, discussing the last move.

Cristiano Giometti 

Bibliography

A. Santangelo (ed.), Museo di Palazzo Venezia. Catalogo delle sculture, Roma 1954, p. 74; G. Incisa della Rocchetta (ed.), Bartolomeo Pinelli, Roma 1956, pp. 199-200 no. XXIII