Domenico Poggini (1520-1590) Italian, Florence, mid-16th century

Overall the condition of the marble is very good. There is some minor wear and dirt to the surface consistent with age. There are a few naturally occurring inclusions to the surface including at the forehead and proper right cheek. There are a few minor chips to the edge of the truncation.
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Sculptures by Poggini are exceedingly rare on the art market. The oval face of the present bust is comparable that of Poggini's statue of Bacchus (signed and dated 1554), which George Blumenthal bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1941. His sensuous lips slightly parted, the figure in both cases appears as though he was about to speak to the beholder, transgressing the threshold between fiction and reality. The present bust's short hair is most similar to that of Poggini's bronze Pluto in the Studiolo of Francesco I (Palazzo Vecchio, Florence; documented 1572-1573) and to his Saint Luke in the Chapel of Saint Luke (Santissima Annunziata, Florence). The three masks in low relief on the cuirass (two in profile and the central one en face) join into the concert of  rare and hybrid figurations on the fanciful armour of the artist's bust of Francesco I in the Uffizi (c. 1563). Poggini was the only one of Benvenuto Cellini's pupils who was active in the same wide range of techniques as his master, that is as a goldsmith, marble sculptor, bronze caster, and medallist. He spent most of his career in Florence working principally for the Medici, but when Felice Peretti di Montalto was elected pope (taking the name of Sixtus V) in 1585, he lured him into his services and the artist relocated to Rome in the following year. For its Florentine comparanda, the present bust, which is impressive both for its lively modelling and its idealisation, was most likely carved in the 1550s or 1560s.

RELATED LITERATURE
D. Heikamp, ed., Magnificenza alla corte dei Medici, exh. cat., Florence 1997, nos. 20 & 21, pp. 55-8 (entries by E.D. Schmidt); E. D. Schmidt, 'Die Signatur und Datierung von Domenico Pogginis Lex Antiqua,' Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 41, 1997, pp. 206-11; D. Heikamp, ed., Palazzo Pitti: La reggia rivelata, exh. cat., Florence, 2003, p. 516 (entry by E.D. Schmidt)