This work, sculpted in white Apuan marble and set on an elegant square base in dark anthracite marble, portrays a young woman with flawless features and flowing wavy hair partly gathered into a chignon at the nape, from which a mischievous curly lock descends from the neck almost down to the breast. The vibrant drapery, ruffled and crinkly, softens the otherwise clean lines of the bust with a restrained elegance, partially covering the figure’s nudity whilst simultaneously revealing a full and shapely breast, shown almost nonchalantly to the imagined bystanders. The absence of iconographical or allegorical attributes makes it impossible to identify the figure depicted with certainty; she is probably an Olympian goddess, as suggested by a comparison with other known sculptures of similar type most of which portray the goddess Venus, a symbol of beauty and feminine perfection.
The statue is expertly carved and its execution displays some original poetic licence, apparent above all in the almost conversational rendering of the face and the virtuoso definition of the hair, playing entirely on harmonious contrasts of light and shade. It dates to the late Baroque period and presents the typical stylistic features of Florentine sculpture between the 17th and 18th centuries and, in particular, affinities with the works of Giovacchino Fortini. Precisely these close similarities with Fortini’s sculptures suggest that the bust presented here was the work of this artist, a prominent figure in Tuscan sculpture at the time of the last Medici rulers.
Son of the stone carver Pier Maria and of Margherita Tortoli, Giovacchino Fortini, born at Settignano in 1670, received his artistic education in Florence, specializing in stone sculpture and stucco modelling under the guidance of Carlo Marcellini and Giuseppe Piamontini. After collaborating in the last decade of the century with Giovan Battista Foggini on the sculptural decorations of the Feroni chapel in the church of the Santissima Annunziata, the sculptor, now independent, embarked upon a prolific career. Appreciated by the members of the Medici family and the Florentine aristocracy, he soon became a favourite abroad as well. Telling in this context is the execution of the refined Funerary Monument of General Philipp Bertram Degenhard Joseph von Hochkirchen, commissioned in 1701 for Cologne, the artist’s youthful masterpiece. A creator of original sacred images, imaginative works inspired by classical mythology and intense portraits rendered with acute psychological introspection, Giovacchino Fortini worked intensely during the early decades of the 18th century. He obtained some prestigious commissions, such as the completion of the architecture and the decorations of the church of San Firenze alongside others of various type for the Grand Dukes of Tuscany and important aristocratic families, including the Capponi, Corsini, Guicciardini, Riccardi and Tempi. Though he was appointed architect to the “Serenissima Casa” in 1725 after Foggini’s death, the artist continued to make large numbers of statues, mainly in marble and bronze, until his death in 1736. These are striking for their original interpretative formulas, mostly alternating between the revival of a 16th-century ideal of beauty and the new European anti-academic late Baroque style. Alongside statues and architectural projects, contemporary critical studies have shown that the artist also worked prolifically in the applied and decorative arts as evidenced by works and documents relating mainly to the execution of medallions, silverware, furnishings, vases, lamps, carriages, frontals and tables (on the artist see S. Bellesi – M. Visonà, Giovacchino Fortini. Scultura Architettura Decorazione e Committenza a Firenze al tempo degli Ultimi Medici, 2 vols, Florence, 2008).
Fortini was a versatile and refinedly eclectic artist, and the statue under examination here is in stylistic terms heavily dependent on some of the most important female busts of late 17th-century Florentine sculpture, mainly by Giuseppe Piamontini. The greatest affinities are with Piamontini’s three busts set on yellow Siena marble bases in Palazzo Pitti and a statue sold on the antiques market in Florence (on these works see respectively S. Bellesi, I marmi di Giuseppe Piamontini, Florence, 2008, pp. 20-23, with previous bibliography and S. Bellesi, Studi sulla pittura e sulla scultura del ‘600-‘700 a Firenze, 2013, pp. 128-131). However, the work is also reminiscent of those of the French artists who gravitated around the court of Versailles at the time and suggests familiarity with the busts of Florentine women painted by Pier Dandini. There are direct typological comparisons with some of the most important statues executed by Giovacchino Fortini in around the middle of the second decade of the 18th century, when this work was also made. The statue’s characteristic features (the unusual rendering of the figure’s face, the rhythmical and musical arrangement of the locks of hair and the almost papery effect of the drapery) find analogies in several works by Fortini, especially the Venus in Palazzo Capponi in Florence and the Bacchant formerly in Villa del Barone at Montemurlo, now in the storerooms of the Florence Soprintendenza (figs 1-2; for these works see S. Bellesi in S. Bellesi – M. Visonà, Giovacchino Fortini, op. cit., 2008, II, pp. 135-138 nos 59-60). The salient stylistic features of these works include personalized allusions to ancient artworks and fleeting reflections on the late Baroque Roman and Genoese sculptural schools. Like them, this statue also goes beyond the classicizing tradition and the style of Foggini that marked Tuscan sculpture between the late 17th and early 18th century, in the quest for an independent and innovative figurative language aimed in part - as in other contemporary sculptures by Giovacchino Fortini - at reviving Florentine Mannerist sculpture.
Sandro Bellesi