Francesco Righetti (1749 - 1819)

Christie's Paris, 23 June 2014, lot 158

This bronze bust is a small-scale reproduction of the head of Castor, from the colossal marble group of the Dioscuri with horses, after whom the Quirinal Hill was nicknamed Monte Cavallo. Goethe was overwhelmed by them; Canova considered them comparable to the Parthenon marbles; and Flaxman believed they must have been executed under the direction of Phidias.

The statues were frequently reproduced in bronze on a reduced scale. In the early 1790s, the Roman bronze-founder Francesco Righetti produced and sold small-format bronze reproductions of the heads alone.

Two signed bronze Dioscuri heads by Righetti, dated 1788, are illustrated by Álvar González-Palacios (1993, no. 507). In 1794, Righetti published a price list of works available from his workshop (Haskell & Penny 1981, p. 343), where the heads of Castor and Pollux appear at the end of the fourth page, listed at the considerable price of 36 sequins.

Francesco Righetti (1749-1819)

Francesco Righetti, one of the most successful and prolific Roman sculptors of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, began his professional career working under Luigi Valadier, the leading silversmith in Rome at the time. Valadier also produced high quality bronzes based on antique models, a business that provided Righetti with the opportunity to master his skills in bronze casting. Eventually, Righetti took over from Valadier and continued to produce replicas of Roman bronzes, including a commission for twelve full-sized lead casts of famous antique statues for Henry Hope. After a visit to his studio, Pope Pius VII became an enthusiast of Righetti's work and commissioned a number of pieces from him, including a pair of large candelabra for San Giorgio Maggiore, the Benedictine monastery in Venice where he was elected pope. In 1805 Pius VII made Righetti head of the Vatican foundry, where his son Luigi Righetti became his assistant. Righetti's works are characterized by high quality casting and finishing and even his smaller pieces, such as the present lot, are always sculptural and majestic.

Related Literature

Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique, London, 1981, n. 3 - 343

Alvar Gonzàles-Palacio, Il Gusto dei Principi, Milan, 1993, n. 507