Giovanni Battista Foggini (Florence 1652-1725)

Despite a previous attribution to Camillo Procaccini (on the verso), this drawing a characteristic and outstanding example of the drawing style of the Florentine sculptor Giovanni Battista Foggini. The drawing is the final design for one of a series of four lost bronze reliefs made by Foggini and exhibited by him at the Santissima Annunziata in 1724, of which wax casts survive at the Museo dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence, and the (now sadly closed) Museo Richard-Ginori della Manifattura di Doccia, Sesto Fiorentino (K. Lankheit, Die Modellsammlung der Porzellanmanufaktur Doccia. Ein Dokument italienischer Barockplastik, Munich, Bruckmann, 1982, pl. 57; for the reliefs, see J. Montagu in Gli ultimi Medici. Il tardo barocco a Firenze, 1670-1743, exhib. cat., Detroit, Institute of Arts, and Florence, Palazzo Pitti, 1974, p. 66, under no. 29). For a similarly finished drawing of unknown location for the relief of the Battle of the Centaurs and the Lapiths, see K. d’Alburquerque, ‘Sculture e scultori tardo-barocchi fiorentini: Disegni della collezione Gabburri e di altre collezioni settecentesche’, Proporzioni, XI-XII, 2010-2011, pp. 120-121, fig. 124.

We are grateful to Kira d’Alburquerque for her assistance in cataloguing this drawing.