Attributed to Giovanni Antonio Gualterio (active 1582-1600) | Italian, Rome, late 16th century | Cristo Morto

This beautiful ivory corpus is carved on a small scale and exhibits very fine, near virtuoso carving, particularly in the hair and drapery. It has been attributed to Gualterio by Margarita Estella, who has pointed out the stylistic parallels with a number of the signed corpora by Gualterio, notably the corpus (without arms or head) in the Grünes Gewölbe in Dresden (dated 1599), and the corpus from the collection of the Duke of Rivas, Madrid (both illustrated by Schmidt, op. cit.). The physiognomy, perizonium arrangement and facial type are all very similar to another corpus, signed by Gualterio and dated 1600, in a Paris private collection (again see Schmidt, op. cit. figs. 2-3). Gualterio, who may have been of French or Flemish origins given his name, was active in Rome where he was engaged in a legal suit in 1595. His few signed works from 1599-1600 exhibit the same elegant late Mannerist style, perhaps informed by Guglielmo della Porta. The present corpus is an attractive and precious seeming addition to his attributed oeuvre.

RELATED LITERATURE

M. Estella, 'Algunas esculturas en marfil italianas en España,' in Archivo Español de Arte, Madrid, 1973; M. Estella, La Escultura Barroca de marfilen España. Las escuelas europeas y las coloniales, Madrid, 1984; E. Schmidt, 'Christ in der Counter Reformation: A signed and dated ivory by Giovanni Antonio Gualterio' in Storia dell “Arte, 119 2008, pp. 5-19

This corpus is the subject of a detailed art historical expertise by Margarita M. Estella Marcos (1930-2020), who made an important contribution to the study of Spanish and Spanish and Portuguese Colonial ivories. She sadly passed away in 2020. Her expertise, in which she cautiously attributes the present corpus to Gualterio, is available upon request.