St. Andrew

Object belonging

One's own

Category

Terracotta sculpture

City

Rome

Location

Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia

Specific location

Terracotta store, cabinet I, shelf 5

Inventory

PV 10752

Material and technique

Terracotta/ patina

Author

Roman School

Dating

Second half of 19th century

Dimensions

41.5x24.5x12.5 cm.

Origin

A. Ghenzi (1968)

Image copyright

SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma

Short description

This maquette depicting St. Andrew became part of the Palazzo Venezia collection in 1968, a gift from the lawyer Alessandro Ghenzi who also donated, at the same time, the statuette of Pope Sixtus III by Bernardino Ludovisi (PV 10753). The figure is positioned on a quadrangular base, now cracked, which is in turn mounted on a low wooden pedestal; the surface of the work is covered with a layer of dark varnish, intended to simulate the effect of bronze. The saint, leaning on a wooden cross, is missing both hands and the left tip of the cross is also lost. Soon after entering the museum’s collection the terracotta was published by Maria Vittoria Brugnoli (1969) as the preparatory model executed by Camillo Rusconi for one of Borromini’s tabernacles in the nave of San Giovanni in Laterano. Brugnoli underlined the importance of the work, particularly “for the incisiveness with which the artist has modelled the clay, using the wooden stick to accurately define the facial features, and the body and the folds of the mantle”. Compared to the strong plasticity of the original, though, there is a certain mechanicalness in the execution here and a propensity to overly stylize the work, tending to highlight the contours of the musculatre and the folds of the drapery rather than reveal their depth and protrusion. The technique is uncharacteristic of Rusconi’s small format sculpture and suggests, instead, that this is a 19th century copy made by an artist of modest ability.

Cristiano Giometti 

Bibliography

M.V. Brugnoli, Santo Pontefice, in Attività della Soprintendenza alle Gallerie del Lazio, Rome 1969, p. 37