Jupiter and Juno

These magnificent and monumental marbles are outstanding and little-known examples of late-Baroque sculpture. Piamontini was - after Giovanni Battista Foggini - the most distinguished sculptor working in Florence in the late 17th and the early 18th centuries. Born there in 1664, he was apprenticed to Foggini and by the age of fourteen had already come to the notice of Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici, carving for him a group in marble. Two years later Piamontini was chosen by the Grand Duke to attend the new Medici Academy in Rome, like Foggini and Soldani before him, and he worked under Ercole Ferrata. He was sent there particularly to study antiquities - probably in order to learn how to restore them effectively, a major concern at this period. The Academy closed in 1686 and on his return home Piamontini was furnished with a studio and a salary, marks of official esteem. He became a productive sculptor in marble and bronze, employed by Florentine churches and Grand Tourists visiting from abroad, including the King of Portugal (St. Luke, of 1732 in the church of the palace at Mafra). His biographer, Gabburri, also mentions 'many Bronzes that are in the famous and truly regal apartment which once belonged to the late lamented Serene Highness, Prince Ferdinando of Tuscany'. Writing in the 1680s, Baldinucci accorded the young Piamontini some thirty lines at the end of his life of Ferrata. Baldinucci noted, 'four beautiful busts of women, with flowing decorations by way of coiffures and graceful drapery', that Piamontini carved for the Grand Duke in early 1689 (J. Montagu, 1974, 'Some small sculptures by G.B. Piamontini', Anticittà viva, 1974, pp. 3-21, figs. 3, 23). The present marbles, brilliantly and exuberantly carved, exhibit this same virtuosic handling of stone, turning marble into fluttering fabric.

To Jennifer Montagu, the most distinguished English scholar of Italian baroque sculpture, is owed the above-cited seminal article for subsequent studies. She was the first to attribute to Piamontini the particular models of Jupiter and Juno that were - unknown to her at the time - exhibited in 1705 and are now to be found as bronze statuettes in the museums of Philadelphia and Oxford. And, as A. Darr has noted, there is also a Doccia porcelain model of Jupiter after Piamontini’s model in Turin (A. Darr, ‘The Figure Re-Visited: Early Doccia Porcelain Sculpture in Detroit and its development in 18th Century Italy, in The International Ceramics Fair and Seminar, London, June 1994, p. 17, note 22). While Piamontini’s fame is largely due to his small-scale bronze statuettes, these marble are rare – and rarely seen – examples of his spectacular talent in composing and carving larger-scale marbles.