An Impressive Italian Pietra Serena Frieze with the Arms of the Noble Guidi di Bagno Family, by Francesco di Simone Ferrucci (1437-1493), Circa 1460-1470, Florence

Collection of an Italian noble family

General, standard surface wear and minor chipping associated with age and use. Some chips along upper edge and corners. Small losses to leaves in center on lower band.
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This beautifully carved frieze by Francesco di Simone Ferrucci, a talented disciple of Verrocchio, probably adorned the lintel of a fireplace in the palazzo of a noble Florentine family. During the second half of the 15th century in Italy, leading sculptors were commissioned to create grand fireplaces and these monumental relief sculptures, bearing the family’s coat of arms and meaningful symbolism, were meant to glorify the family's name and reputation.

The present relief is centered by the coat of arms of the Tuscan counts, Guidi di Bagno, who belonged to one of the largest and most powerful noble families in central Italy in the Middle Ages. In 1191, emperor Heinrich VI awarded the family a group of territories in Eastern Tuscany (Setsan, op. cit., pp. 356-378) at which time they adopted the St. Andrew’s cross as their armorial device. This device is encircled by a laurel wreath, underscoring the fame and honor of the family, and is flanked by hovering putti with their feet resting on parallel cloud banks. Pairs of griffins and chimeras, symbolizing both courage and the forces of evil, confront one another on each side, separated by flaming candelabra and above several registers of classical motifs. This ornamentation was derived from the carvings on Roman sarcophagi, see, for example, a sarcophagus with chimera, circa 140-170 AD in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, acc. no. 23.35.

The fine, detailed carving with the idiosyncratic treatment of the putti with long, seemingly wet hair hanging about their faces and the deep folds between the rolls of flesh on their arms and legs is comparable to other works by Ferrucci, whose early sculptures betray a stylistic dependence on Desiderio da Settignano. The majority of pieces by Ferrucci are preserved in museum collections or in their original church installations, including a similar pietra serena frieze in the Museo Bardini, Florence (Lusanna, op. cit., fig. 240) and another in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, both previously ascribed to Desiderio. The New York and Florence reliefs were carved with compositions analogous to the present lot and the Morgan example includes the same bands of classical motifs seen on the lower registers of the present sculpture. Two drawings by Ferrucci and his workshop circa 1480-90, preserved in the Museé du Louvre, Paris, and once part of a group formerly known as the ‘Verrocchio Sketchbook’, reveal the origin of the floating putti (fig. 1).

The incisive detailing of the wreath, the wings and the classical motifs can also be found in documented works by Ferrucci including the monument to Alessandro Tartagni in the church of San Domenico, Bologna, 1485-87 (Pisani, op. cit., fig. 100) where the putti support a wreath once bearing a coat of arms, above the sculptor’s signature.  Ferrucci’s sepulcre of Barbara Manfredi in the church of San Mercuriale, made in 1492 (Pisani, op. cit., fig. 36) again includes some of the same classical ornamentation and facial types of the putti with long, windswept locks of hair. Furthermore, several of these design elements were used in Ferrucci’s stucco decoration for the apartment of the Duchess of Urbino in the Palazzo Ducale.

The outstanding clarity of form and detail in this frieze is underscored by the material from which it was carved. Pietra serena is a hard and fine-grained stone from Fiesole which was employed by Tuscan sculptors throughout the Renaissance. Here, Ferrucci was able to achieve a sense of depth, with very shallow relief, using of a variety of finely chiseled textures and contours.

RELATED LITERATURE
H. Wills, Florentine Heraldry, London, 1901, pp. 147 and 148
J. Pope-Hennessy, Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1964
Sculptures of the 15th & 16th Centuries, Summer Exhibition, London, 1972, no. 8
E.N. Lusanna and L. Faedo (eds.), Il Museo Bardini a Firenze, vol. II, Milan, 1986, cat. 202, pp. 261 and 262, fig. 240
L. Pisani, Francesco di Simone Ferrucci, Fondazione Carlo Marchi, 2007