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Lot Essay
This bust, both grand and hyper-refined appears, at the same time, intensely personal and gloriously unrestrained. Animated, original and technically accomplished, it represents the best of Italian Baroque sculpture. The carving is a tour-de-force and, clearly, Ferrata excelled in extremes. The tousled and wildly curly hair contrasts with a smooth, barely-lined brow and youthful face with the, again, contrasting swirling highlights of his marvelous sideburns and mustache. And then the dizzyingly complex lace, tassels and buttons, with their staccato of light and dark, are set against the smooth, larger planes of the crumpled cloak, with their long, deep shadows.
Attributed to Ferrata by both Bacchi (private correspondence) and Angelini (Ibid.) this bust, and Ferrata, can be closely linked to the two titans of the Italian Baroque sculpture: Gianlorenzo Bernini and Alessandro Algardi. Ferrata was a pupil of Tommaso Orsolini in Genoa and by 1637 was working with Cosimo Fanzago in Naples and had moved definitively to Rome by 1647. There, Ferrata collaborated with both Bernini and Algardi and was influenced equally by these two masters as his sculptures display both Bernini’s confidence, even audacity, and Algardi’s elegance and classicism. Ferrata, after having established his own workshop, trained many pupils, such as Melchiorre Caffà, Francesco Aprile, Giuseppe Mazzuoli and Camillo Rusconi, who all went on to become successful, and even celebrated, sculptors (Bacchi, op. cit.).
This gentleman has been tentatively identified by Bacchi and Angelini as a member of the Centurioni family, from the ancient and celebrated Genoese clan, as there was a ‘ritratto del Marchese Centurioni’ mentioned in the inventory of the sculptor’s workshop at the time of his death in 1686. That he was young, handsome, sophisticated, aristocratic, rich and confident is obvious. And that will have to be enough to satisfy us for now as his actual identity remains a tantalizing mystery.
Attributed to Ferrata by both Bacchi (private correspondence) and Angelini (Ibid.) this bust, and Ferrata, can be closely linked to the two titans of the Italian Baroque sculpture: Gianlorenzo Bernini and Alessandro Algardi. Ferrata was a pupil of Tommaso Orsolini in Genoa and by 1637 was working with Cosimo Fanzago in Naples and had moved definitively to Rome by 1647. There, Ferrata collaborated with both Bernini and Algardi and was influenced equally by these two masters as his sculptures display both Bernini’s confidence, even audacity, and Algardi’s elegance and classicism. Ferrata, after having established his own workshop, trained many pupils, such as Melchiorre Caffà, Francesco Aprile, Giuseppe Mazzuoli and Camillo Rusconi, who all went on to become successful, and even celebrated, sculptors (Bacchi, op. cit.).
This gentleman has been tentatively identified by Bacchi and Angelini as a member of the Centurioni family, from the ancient and celebrated Genoese clan, as there was a ‘ritratto del Marchese Centurioni’ mentioned in the inventory of the sculptor’s workshop at the time of his death in 1686. That he was young, handsome, sophisticated, aristocratic, rich and confident is obvious. And that will have to be enough to satisfy us for now as his actual identity remains a tantalizing mystery.