Study for a Kneeling Angel

Object belonging

One's own

Category

Terracotta sculpture

City

Rome

Location

Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia

Specific location

Room 21

Inventory

PV 13316

Material and technique

Terracotta

Author

Antonio Giorgetti (1635-1667)

Dating

c. 1657

Dimensions

17x12 cm.

Origin

Gorga Collection (1948)

Image copyright

SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma

Short description

The life of the sculptor Antonio Giorgetti has been the focus of important recent research by Jennifer Montagu, who has retraced the significant stages of his career, demonstrating the key traits of his style. Montagu was able to identify the strong influence of the work of Alessandro Algardi in the training of Giorgetti who, in all the previous literature, had been seen as belonging to the school of Bernini. The son of the carpenter Giovanni Maria and brother of the sculptor Giuseppe, Antonio first worked in Rome in 1657 in the Spada chapel in San Girolamo della Carità, executing a work that was surprising for its inventiveness. Giorgetti’s role in the Spada chapel is recorded in documents in the Spada archive dating from between 1657 and 1659 (cfr. M. Heimburger Ravalli, Architettura Scultura e Arti minori nel Barocco italiano. Ricerche nell'Archivio Spada, Firenze 1977, pp. 105-106); he executed the two kneeling angels that hold a long, reddish-brown drape. There are several preparatory models for this sculpture. The first to be linked to the work in San Girolamo is held at the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, a model that reveals an idea for the composition, later fully realised. The Palazzo Venezia terracotta, which dates from the same period, around 1657, appears cut off at the bust: according to Barberini (1991) this was not the result of an accident, but was rather intended by Giorgetti himself so he could focus his attention on a study of the legs. The smooth edges and the trapezoidal cut on the chest suggest the model could be joined to the whole, thus allowing the sculptor to model two or more versions of the upper part of the figure and identify the most harmonious solution for the whole piece.

Cristiano Giometti 

Bibliography

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. 42; A. Bacchi, Scultura del '600 a Roma, Milan 1996, p. 808; O. Ferrari and S. Papaldo, Le sculture del Seicento a Roma, Rome 1999, p. 507