Francesco Fanelli (Florence 1577- after 1641) Anglo-Italian, 17th century

Formerly believed to be a model by Ferdinando Tacca, Radcliffe's research into the cabinet made for John Evelyn (now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London) with inset reliefs of Orpheus charming the animals, allowed him to link a corpus of reliefs and identify them as being by the Anglo-Italian sculptor Francesco Fanelli who was born in Florence in 1577 and was last documented in England in 1641. Aside from the Orpheus relief and the associated animal plaques, the present relief of TheRest on the Flight into Egypt- The Holy family taking refuge in the Robber's House, as well as reliefs of Christ Carrying the Cross, Marcus Curtius Leaping into the Gulf and Adam and Eve were also subsequently attributed to Fanelli's hand.

The relief of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt is often paired with Christ Carrying the Cross despite their incongruous subject matter. Examples of the pairing can be found in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (inv. nos. 66.43.1-1) and the University of Kansas Museum of Art, Lawrence. 

Other reliefs of this subject include: one sold Sotheby's London, 8-9 December 1988, lot 283; one in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (M.14-1933); and an octagonal relief in the Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. no. A67-1951), the latter currently listed on the museum website as "Venice circa 1550-1560", reverting back to the general attribution embraced by scholars prior to Radcliffe's work on Fanelli.

The scene depicts an episode from the Flight to Egypt as related in the Apocryphal Gospels. The Holy Family, fleeing to Egypt, were waylaid by a band of highwaymen or robbers. One of them was so taken with the beauty and majesty of the family that he persuaded the other robber to allow the family into his home. The son of one of the robbers had leprosy and was cured of his illness when he was later washed by the water used to bathe the young Christ.

RELATED LITERATURE

A. Radcliffe, “Ferdinando Tacca, the Missing Link in Florentine Baroque Bronzes,” in Kunst des Barock in der Toskana: Studien zur Kunst unter den letzten Medici, Munich, 1976, p. 20;

A. Radcliffe and P. Thornton, 'John Evelyn's Cabinet', in Connoisseur, April 1978, pp. 254-62;

V. Avery, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, exhibition catalogue, Daniel Katz Ltd, London, 2002, pp. 172-75, no. 24