A New Work by Paolo Sanquirico

Descrizione

Storia dell’arte n. 160
Nuova Serie 2 | 2023

Steven F. Ostrow

A New Work by Paolo Sanquirico

 

This article presents a newly (re)discovered work by Paolo Sanquirico (c. 1565-1630), an artist little-known today to all but specialists but who during his lifetime was widely recognized as a virtuoso – a man of many talents, not just in the arts but in other spheres as well. The work in question is a small bronze, a cast of the modello for his most important and best-known sculpture, the monumental bronze statue of Pope Paul V in the Roman basilica of S. Maria Maggiore. Owned by the Borghese family from the time of its making until the end of the nineteenth century, this finely wrought work not only represents an important addition to Sanquirico’s oeuvre but also a rare example of a bronze cast of a Baroque sculptor’s preliminary model.