

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.