GIUSEPPE MARIA MAZZA (1653-1741) (ATTRIBUÉ)

Lot 305
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Estimation :
35000 - 40000 EUR
GIUSEPPE MARIA MAZZA (1653-1741) (ATTRIBUÉ)
Terracotta group representing the allegory of Sculpture in the form of a young woman draped "in the antique style" holding a mallet in one hand and a chisel in the other; she is leaning against her work; at her feet a monumental sculpted head and tools surmounted by a putto clasping a rooster in his arms. H : 43 - W : 23 - D : 14 cm. Study of the work by Tomaso Montanari : "This very beautiful sculpture in terracotta, made around 1720, does not seem to have been made as a modello for a transposition in marble or bronze, but rather as an autonomous work of art, destined to the ornament of an amateur collection. The extreme finish of the work, its particular iconography (an allegory of the art of sculpture itself, rich in references to the classical tradition, including the large female head, but also to the achievements of Baroque statuary: from the putto à la Duquesnoy to the virtuoso insistence on the rooster's feathers) and also its style, which undoubtedly takes us back to the great season of eighteenth-century Bolognese sculpture in terracotta (see essentially Eugenio Riccomini, Ordine e vaghezza: scultura in Emilia nell'età barocca, Bologna, 1972, and Vaghezza e furore: la scultura del Settecento in Emilia, Bologna, 1977; Stefano Tumidei, "Terrecotte bolognesi di Sei e Settecento: collezionismo, produzione artistica, consumo devozionale", in Renzo Grandi (ed.), Presepi e terrecotte nei Musei Civici di Bologna, Bologna, 1991, pp. 21-51). More precisely, some comparisons lead to attribute our Allegory of Sculpture to the hand of Giuseppe Maria Mazza. The profile of the figure (from the Greek nose to the hair slicked back) can be superimposed, for example, on that of the beautiful youthful Madonna exhibited in the collections of the Davia Bargellini Museum in Bologna. In this same collection, the figures of Bacchus and Ceres offer quite appropriate parallels, both in the rendering of the drapery on the nude and in the posture of the figure. It is also possible to closely relate our sculpture to an Allegory of Painting (of identical material and dimensions) presented at the Heim sale in London in 1981 and acquired by the Mead Art Museum in Amherst, USA. The two figures are thought of as a pair, not only because of the obvious complementarity of their subject matter, but also because of their respective positions, gestures, relationships with the accompanying putti, and the attribution of identical distinctive signs (such as the medallions hanging from their necks). This Allegory of Painting bears (since its appearance in Heim: Art as Decoration, Heim Gallery, summer exhibition 1981, no. 30) a credible attribution to Angelo Gabriello Pio (1690-Bologna-1770). We must therefore assume that both sculptors (the master and the pupil) were commissioned by an amateur who wanted to put them in competition and confrontation (according to a practice attested by other examples, see Tumidei, op. cit., note 47), naturally reserving the allegory of the beloved Sculpture to the master. The stylistic characteristics of these sculptures (which it would be nice to be able to see again side by side) lead us to date this episode to Pio's return to Bologna, i.e. shortly after 1719. Giuseppe Maria Mazza's Allegory of Sculpture thus appears to be a perfect summary of Baroque sculpture, and above all a kind of rare artistic autobiography: as another great Bolognese, Annibale Carracci, said, artists must "speak with their hands".
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