BY PIERRE-ETIENNE MONNOT (1657-1733), 1710

Pierre-Étienne Monnot (1657-1733) had his early training in France, before moving to Rome in around 1687. Not long thereafter, he was approached by the Landgrave Karl von Hesse-Kassel and commissioned to execute the first of a series of marble groups and reliefs for an elaborate interior in the Marmorbad at Kassel which would occupy Monnot for the rest of his life. Among his other commissions, Monnot executed important marble reliefs of the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Flight into Egypt (Sta. Maria della Vittoria, Rome, illustrated in Enggass, op. cit., plate volume, pls. 22 and 23) which display a heavier reliance on the rippling drapery style prevalent among the followers of Bernini than is evident in the present lot. Monnot also executed a number of marbles for English patrons, most notably the 5th Earl of Exeter at Burghley, including a marble relief of the Virgin and Child. Monnot's masterpiece - which is directly contemporary with the present relief of the Deposition - is his overlife-size figure of St. Peter (1708-1713) in S. Giovanni in Laterano, Rome. It displays the same, more simplified, sweeps of drapery and psychological intensity.