ITALIAN, NAPLES OR ROME, CIRCA 1630-1640FOUR PUTTI HOLDING THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE PASSION |

gilt bronze ; on red jasper and gilt bronze bases

Gustave de Rothschild ; by descent to his son Robert de Rothschild ; by descent to Madame de Benvenuti, born Diane de Rothschild ; her sale, Piasa, Paris, 11-13 June 1997, lot 132 ; acquired in the above sale by Partridge Fine Art, London ; with Daniel Katz, London ; private American collection, London ; Christie's London, 13 December 2001, lot 441, where acquired by the present owner

RELATED LITERATURE
P. D’Agostino, Cosimo Fanzago scultore, Naples, 2011, pp. 352-354, pl. 231

Each of the four putti holds an Instrument of the Passion (Arma Christi): the cross, the Centurion's spire, the hyssop stick to which the Holy Sponge was attached, and the pliers. Their dimensions and Eucharistic iconography indicate that the figures were originally part of a tabernacle. The back of each base was formerly unmoulded in order to be fitted into the architecture of the tabernacle. Following the putti's removal from their original setting, upper and lower mouldings similar to these on the other sides of the bases were added. The present putti find a striking iconographic and stylistic parallel in the gilt bronze Angels of the Passion on the tabernacle of the convent church of La Purissima in Salamanca, by the workshop of the Neapolitan sculptor Cosimo Fanzago (1591-1678). Commissioned in 1633 by Manuel de Zuñiga, Vice-Roy of Naples, for the family chapel in Salamanca, the tabernacle was relocated to the new church of La Purissima in 1634, together with the impressive altar to which it belongs. For further comparison to the present figures, see two statuettes of Saint Peter and Saint Paul with gilt bronze and jasper bases, which were recently acknowledged as belonging to the Salamanca tabernacle (28,6 cm high, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 52.187, and private collection, New York).

The superior quality of the casting of the present putti may support an attribution to a Roman sculptor active during the same period.