THE PROPERTY OF A LADY
THE FARNBOROUGH HALL BIGIO MORATO BUST OF A NUBIAN, his face and gaze turned slightly towards his left, with finely drilled echeloned corkscrew curls, with inlaid eyes, both ears pierced, on a variegated marble turned socle base

Details
THE FARNBOROUGH HALL BIGIO MORATO BUST OF A NUBIAN, his face and gaze turned slightly towards his left, with finely drilled echeloned corkscrew curls, with inlaid eyes, both ears pierced, on a variegated marble turned socle base

17th or early 18th Century, after the Antique

15¾in. (40cm.) high excl. base; 21in. (58cm.) high incl. base
Provenance
Farnborough Hall, Farnborough, Warwickshire; acquired in Rome around 1740
"An unknown antiquary whose journal survives in the British Museum (Hypomnemata, Add. Mss. 6230), and who visited Farnborough in 1746, records seeing ... some of William Holbech's sculpture already displayed in the house: 'several busts of white marble, one of black ... all brought frome Rome'." (in G. Jackson-Stops, Farnborough Hall, The National Trust, 1981, p. 10)

Lot Essay

PUBLISHED:
A. Scholl, Die antiken Skulpturen in Farnborough Hall sowie in Althorp House, Blenheim Palace, Lyme Park und Penrice Castle, Mainz am Rhein, 1995 (forthcoming), no. F31 and dated as 17th Century; R. M. Schneider, Bunte Barbaren: Orientalenstatuen aus farbigem Marmor in der römischen Repräsentationskunst, Worms, 1986, pp. 176-178, p. 215, no. BK12, pl. 42, 3-4; Forschungsarchiv für römische Plastik, Köln, Neg. nos. 2040/6-7

M. L. Anderson and L. Nista (eds), Radiance in Stone; sculptures in coloured marble from the Museo Nazionale Romano, Atlanta, 1989, p. 70; and G. B. Waywell, The Lever and Hope Sculptures, Berlin, 1986, p. 29

It is believed that this head of an idealized black might be a copy of the famous Versailles "moro", carved in Rome by Nicolas Cordier for the Borghese family at the beginning of the 17th Century, cf. S. Pressouyre, Nicolas Cordier: Recherches sur la sculpture à Rome autour de 1600, II, Collection de L' École Française de Rome, 73, 1984, no. 21, figs. 190, 194, 195, 198 and 206.

Other copies are known besides the well known Versailles and Farnborough Hall busts. They include ones in Rome and Dresden, as well as a variant in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight (cf. Waywell op. cit, pp. 28-29, no. 23, pls. 28-29), Newby Hall, North Yorkshire and the Brooklyn Museum (cf. J. Vercoutter et al, The Image of the Black in Western Art, I, Cambridge, 1976, pp. 194-199, figs. 251-252)

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