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Lot Essay
Giallo tigrato is a rare marble that the ancient Romans called ‘marmor corinthium’, because it was (wrongly) thought to have been quarried only in the region of Corinth. On its polished surface, the marble has pockets of a cloudy yellowy-orange colour surrounded by dark round veins, which look like the pelt of a tiger or leopard. A number of blocks of the giallo tigrato were used to decorate the church of Santa Maria Maggiore and San Andrea della Valle, Rome, but it was used sparingly over the centuries, probably because the location of the quarries were unknown post-antiquity, and so any examples were generally re-carved from a small number of antique sources. In 1824, samples of the marble were discovered near Monte Calvo, north-east of Rome, thereby providing a fresh source of this rare marble.
The animal depicted is either a leopard or an ocelot, a wild cat known as the dwarf leopard. Ocelots are found in Central and South America and were first described by Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae in 1758. It has been suggested that the patterned marble of the present object more closely resembles that of an ocelot, but leopards were better known and the differences are small enough to be inconsequential. Its eyes are constructed of reverse-painted glass which gives them their bright coloring that ignite the appearance of the wild animal.
The present leopard is closely related to at least five other single leopards or pairs of leopards that have been dated from the 16th to the 18th centuries. However the most relevant comparison is to a standing leopard with her young, but depicted looking straight ahead instead of with her head turned, as in the present example, that is in Milan’s Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (inv. no. 339). There are a number of carved marble animals in the Sala degli Animali in the Vatican Museums that also relate to Moglia’s leopards – which makes sense as Moglia worked for the Vatican as a both a restorer and a sculptor. The two rooms that make up the Sala degli Animali were set up under Pope Pius VI (1775-1799) with the intent of creating a ‘stone zoo’. The Pope recruited a number of artists to work on these rooms, who both restored ancient works and created new ones. The most celebrated and talented of these artists was Francesco Antonio Franzoni (1734-1818). Franzoni used colored marble to allude to the tones of the coat and plumage of various animals and to give the works a unique richness, such as the use of pavonazzetto and alabastro del circeo in the ‘Lupo di Pavonazzetto’ (González-Palacios, op. cit., cat. n° 13) and luxury stones in ‘Tigre con la bocca aperta’ (cat. n° 97), that suggests an affinity with the present work.
As mentioned above, there are at least five other known leopards carved from giallo tigrato in existence, including the group in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, but the other four are in private collections. A group of two leopards depicted fighting or playing is located in an English private collection, a pair of leopards lying down are in a French private collection, another leopard, seated, was sold, Christie’s, Paris, 16 May, 2017, lot 3 (€772,500), a seated leopard, with its head turned to its left, that was previously both in the Goldschmidt collection and the collection of the Count and Countess of Pastré, and later the Riahi Collection was sold Sotheby’s, Paris, 6 July, 2017, lot 52 (€991,500) and the fourth leopard, seated with its proper right paw raised, was offered, Christie’s, Paris, 12-14 December, 2018, lot 22. All of these appear to have glass eyes and can be thought of as a homogenous group. The existence of this group, the style of their manufacture with the inclusion of glass eyes, and the form of some of the group, suggest a most likely dating of circa 1824, when this rare marble became more readily available following the discovery near Monte Calvo.
The animal depicted is either a leopard or an ocelot, a wild cat known as the dwarf leopard. Ocelots are found in Central and South America and were first described by Swedish zoologist Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae in 1758. It has been suggested that the patterned marble of the present object more closely resembles that of an ocelot, but leopards were better known and the differences are small enough to be inconsequential. Its eyes are constructed of reverse-painted glass which gives them their bright coloring that ignite the appearance of the wild animal.
The present leopard is closely related to at least five other single leopards or pairs of leopards that have been dated from the 16th to the 18th centuries. However the most relevant comparison is to a standing leopard with her young, but depicted looking straight ahead instead of with her head turned, as in the present example, that is in Milan’s Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (inv. no. 339). There are a number of carved marble animals in the Sala degli Animali in the Vatican Museums that also relate to Moglia’s leopards – which makes sense as Moglia worked for the Vatican as a both a restorer and a sculptor. The two rooms that make up the Sala degli Animali were set up under Pope Pius VI (1775-1799) with the intent of creating a ‘stone zoo’. The Pope recruited a number of artists to work on these rooms, who both restored ancient works and created new ones. The most celebrated and talented of these artists was Francesco Antonio Franzoni (1734-1818). Franzoni used colored marble to allude to the tones of the coat and plumage of various animals and to give the works a unique richness, such as the use of pavonazzetto and alabastro del circeo in the ‘Lupo di Pavonazzetto’ (González-Palacios, op. cit., cat. n° 13) and luxury stones in ‘Tigre con la bocca aperta’ (cat. n° 97), that suggests an affinity with the present work.
As mentioned above, there are at least five other known leopards carved from giallo tigrato in existence, including the group in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, but the other four are in private collections. A group of two leopards depicted fighting or playing is located in an English private collection, a pair of leopards lying down are in a French private collection, another leopard, seated, was sold, Christie’s, Paris, 16 May, 2017, lot 3 (€772,500), a seated leopard, with its head turned to its left, that was previously both in the Goldschmidt collection and the collection of the Count and Countess of Pastré, and later the Riahi Collection was sold Sotheby’s, Paris, 6 July, 2017, lot 52 (€991,500) and the fourth leopard, seated with its proper right paw raised, was offered, Christie’s, Paris, 12-14 December, 2018, lot 22. All of these appear to have glass eyes and can be thought of as a homogenous group. The existence of this group, the style of their manufacture with the inclusion of glass eyes, and the form of some of the group, suggest a most likely dating of circa 1824, when this rare marble became more readily available following the discovery near Monte Calvo.