Attributed to Francesco Maria Schiaffino (1689-1765) Italian, Genoa, circa 1750-1760

Overall the condition of the marble is good with dirt throughout and some wear to the surface consistent with age. The marble would benefit from a professional clean. There is dust in the crevices, and there are spats of red and silver paint to the shoulders and the truncation at the back. There are a few minor chips and abrasions, including to the lower edge of the bust, the top of the ornament to the back of the head, the braid, two locks at the neck, and to the edge of the drapery just above the left breast. There are a few areas with minor scratching, including to the right breast in the middle of the chest and to the edge of the drapery under the right breast. There is an area of abrasion running along the ribbon tying the drapery at the right shoulder. The marble has some veining visible on the surface, consistent with material, including a line running from the right corner of the mouth towards the right ear, and some yellow veins to the shoulders at the back. There are some areas with naturally occurring inclusions, including to the swathe of drapery in front of the right shoulder and to the swathe of drapery at the centre near the lower truncation at the front. All these inclusions have been filled with plaster. There are a few pencil marks to the top edge of the marble socle, and a large splash of paint to its lower edge. Two of the corners of the mottled yellow marble section have been reattached. The yellow marble has some stable, slightly open naturally occurring veining, of which some sections are filled. The base has flaking to the paint throughout, including areas of the gilding at the corners of the cornices, as well as the scrollwork to the sides of the masks and all the edges. The base was constructed in sections; several of the joints are open, causing some loss to the paint around the cracks. Otherwise there is some naturally occurring splitting to the wood, including to the nose and mouth of the animal mask at the front. There are some traces of inactive worming, particularly at the top. Part of the scroll on the left of the animal mask is loose. There is dust throughout, particularly in the crevices of the scrollwork underneath the female masks. Otherwise the condition of the base is stable.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

In the middle of the 18th century, on the crossroads of Late Baroque and Rococo, Genoa saw the rise of its most talented and successful school of sculptors. Usually destined for the city's many well-preserved palazzi or one of the opulent churches of Liguria, major marble carvings by members from the school rarely appear outside Italy, let alone on the market. The present bust bears all the hallmarks of a Genovese 18th-century masterpiece, combining beauty and elegance of design with impressive, seemingly revolving drapery and the daring incorporation of inventive motifs in the details. Particularly these details, which take an almost architectural form here, are signature flourishes of one of Genoa's most internationally renowned sculptors, Francesco Maria Schiaffino. His authorship is substantiated by the object's noble provenance.

The bust represents a woman with an elaborate diadem crowned by a scalloped ornament and a decorated knop in the hair at the back of the head around which a braid is wrapped. A great swathe of drapery orbits the shoulders, leaving one breast exposed, and is knotted together and suspended at the lower edge of the truncation. The subject's great, alluring beauty is attained by piercing eyes, a sleek jawline and shapely flattened chin, her soft neck, and wonderfully drilled and textured curled locks. Equally noteworthy are the highly unusual fluted buttress to the reverse and the socle, which is rhythmically decorated with rocaille elements. The figure was reputedly previously displayed in a grand Genoa palazzo alongside a bust of a man which is in private hands elsewhere.

The exuberance and less classical handling of the face and the mannered details on the bust point to the work of several of Genoa's greatest sculptors, including Filippo Parodi and Bernardo and Francesco Maria Schiaffino. These sculptors benefited from being trained in Rome by late Baroque masters such as Camillo Rusconi before returning to their native city and absorbing Spanish and, more importantly, French fashions. Their decorations of the Genovese palazzi often pushed the limits of marble sculpture, a case in point being Bernardo Schiaffino's virtuoso Romulus and Remus groups in the Palazzo Bianco. The ingenuity with which the reverse, socle, and hairpieces of the present bust are detailed, however, are only paralleled in the most ambitious work of Bernardo's younger brother, Francesco Maria: the 1735 Tomb of Saint Catherine of Genoa in the church devoted to her in that city.

Around the elevated glass coffin in which the mummified body of Saint Catherine Fieschi is displayed, Schiaffino placed four unidentified monumental female personifications of Virtues, reclining on enormous projecting marble volutes reinforced with iron, who rapturously look up to the Saint. Each has amazonian proportions and is enveloped by drapery of which the folds reach around the bodies before elaborately crossing around the abdomen much like the present bust. The collar of the Virtue with the cloth headdress often reserved for Old Testament women lifts up from the body in a similar fashion as is seen on our bust's proper left shoulder. Equally important to note is the treatment of the hair of the woman with a helmet where the curling locks flow to one side to balance a swathe of drapery on the shoulder and are lent a sense of movement by being fully carved free from the figure and detailed and textured by following a spiralling pattern with a toothed chisel and drills. Conclusive, however, are the women's headdresses: two have diadems that compare well to the present figure whilst the Virtue with the Old Testament headdress has a circular hairpin at the back of the head that performs the same function as the knop at the back of our figure's head which is decorated with Rococo shapes that are nearly identical to those on the socle of the bust.

Because Schiaffino slowly moved away from the late Baroque style of his master Rusconi as the century progressed and because his early representations of women such as those on the Saint Catherine Fieschi tomb were often meant to convey forcefulness or rapture, the facial features of the present bust compare better to Schiaffino's manner of representing youthful women towards the end of his career. From the 1740s onwards he lent grace and a childlike alertness to his female subjects by giving them slender, elongated faces with sharply delineated features such as the thin and long nose and small mouth with plump lips that also typify the physiognomy of the present carving. The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception he supplied for the chapel in the Palazzo Doria Lamba in 1762, for example, compares particularly well to the present bust. As such Schiaffino probably carved the bust one or two decades after the tomb in Genoa, around 1750-1760.

RELATED LITERATURE
Sculture di Francesco Maria Schiaffino, exh. cat. Palazzo Rosso, Genoa, 1973; L. Puccio Canepa, 'Interventi settecenteschi a Chiavari: F. Schiaffino e G. Galeotti nella chiesa di S. Giovanni Battista', Arte cristiana 89, 2001, pp. 355-368