CIRCA 1786-1800, IMPRESSED VOLPATO MARK AT BACK

The celebrated engraver Giovanni Volpato founded a porcelain factory in Rome in 1785 specifically to 'reproduce in biscuit the most beautiful antiquities - statues, low reliefs and ornaments - that are found in such great numbers in this realm, to replace the ridiculous dolls which are used on dining and side tables'.1 In 1795 the architect Charles Heathcote Tatham sent Volpato's catalogue (which included the Barberini Faun model) to the architect Henry Holland in England, noting that it was recommended by Angelica Kauffmann. For another example of this figure in the Cini Collection, Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome, see Hugh Honour, Oscar Ganzina and Fabrizio Magani, i Trionfi di Volpato, Milan, 2003, p. 74, pl. 8, and see p. 41, fig. 3 for an engraving by Giovanni Volpato and Raffaello Morghen of the Barberini Faun executed in 1786.

1. Volpato's Lucchese agent's letter to the Roman government in 1786 cited by Hugh Honour, 'Statuettes after the Antique, Volpato's Roman Porcelain Factory', Apollo, LXXXV, 1967, p. 371.