Attributed to Giuseppe Piamontini (1664-1742) Italian, Florence, circa 1690

private collection, Florence

Overall the condition of the marble is good. There is some minor wear and dirt to the surface consistent with age. There is some naturally occurring veining visible on the surface including around the proper right shoulder and the edge of the drapery on the far right and the proper left elbow. There are a few minor includsions to the marble consistent with material, including to the forehead and proper right cheek.
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This emotive group of Niobe, protecting the last of her daughters from the arrows of Apollo and Diana, is derived from the large classical group discovered in Rome shortly before April 1583. Soon afterwards it was purchased by Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici for the garden of the Villa Medici in Rome.  Plaster casts of the group were taken and arrived in Florence by 1588. Although engravings of the Medici Niobe by G.B. de Cavallieri first appeared in 1594, it was not until 1769 that they were removed from Rome and by 1781 had been installed in a dedicated room in the Uffizi Florence.

Giuseppe Piamontini is very clearly inspired by the classical group in his rendition of this subject. He must have seen it in Rome or even more likely in Florence where the casts of the group could be seen shortly after their arrival there in 1588.  His treatment however is inspired but not taken directly from the antique with distinct changes: the hands, the extended arm with a fold of Niobe’s drapery swirling like a standard. The attribution is based on its comparison with a marble bust of Diana in the Pitti Palace and the large figure of St. John the Baptist in the Baptistery in Florence. Note the treatment of the heavy pleats to the drapery, to the surface of the marble, a characteristic often found in Florentine baroque marbles.  Between 1681 and 1686 Piamontini was sent to Rome by the Grand Duke Ferdinand to further his art at the Florentine Academy under the direction of Cio Ferri and Ercole Ferrata. On his return to Florence he worked with Foggini and concentrated on court commissions.

Further confirmation of this attribution to Piamontini is the fact that the dimensions of this marble point to the fact that the marble was a private commission. The marble comes by direct descent from a Florentine family who commissioned from both Piamontini and Foggini.

RELATED LITERATURE
F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique. The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven/ London, 1981, pp. 274-9, no. 66; D. Garstang, 'Finding Piamontini v. Harwood. A Rediscovered Terracotta by G. B. Piamontini,' Apollo, September 1988, pp. 179-1, fig. 1; G. Pratesi (ed.), Repertorio della scultura Fiorentina del seicento e settecento, Milan, 1993, vol. iii, nos. 406-7, 410-11, 416, 419, 445; D. Zikos, Piamontini's Juno and Jupiter Rediscovered, London, 2011