Tuscany

GIOVAN FRANCESCO PIERI

(Prato 1669 – Naples 1773)

ARTWORK TITLE

Dead Christ

DATE OF THE ARTWORK

About 1750

MATERIAL

Polychrome wax on a wooden base

MEASURES

27 × 60 × 30 cm

RICHIEDI INFORMAZIONI

DESCRIPTION

A work of great virtuosity worthy of a master who took great care over the depiction of the human anatomy and the realistic tradition of coloured wax. The work uses a stylistic language steeped in erudition, marked essentially by lexical characters that reconcile late Baroque Florentine compositional formulae and the rigorous naturalism found in certain sculptures and in Neapolitan and southern Italian wax work of the late 17th and 18th centuries. The wax work has clear affinities with such works as the ochre alabaster Dead Christ by Giuseppe Piamontini to be found in the sacristy of the Palatine Chapel in the Pitti Palace, and especially also with the beautiful bronze Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Massimiliano Soldani Benzi in the Art Museum in Seattle. Typological similarities with compositions from southern Italy can also be seen if the work is compared with those of Giuseppe Sanmartino, Francesco Celebrano and some coloured wax works by Gaetano Zumbo.

LITERATURE

S. Bellesi, Studi sulla pittura e sulla scultura del ’600 – ’700 a Firenze, ed. Polistampa, Florence 2013, pp. 160-162.