A PAIR OF NORTH ITALIAN PAINTED FIGURES OF DOLPHINS

These eye-catching and whimsical dolphin figures are typical of the almost surreal imagination of Genoese sculptors and designers at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, such as Filippo Parodi and Domenico Piola. The present lot is comparable to a similarly carved torchère by the Genoese sculptor Filippo Parodi currently in villa Doria, palazzo dei Giganti, Genoa, see H.C. Fioratti, Il Mobile Italiano, dall'antichità allo stile Impero, p. 117, fig. 210. Furthermore, these dolphins also relate to a drawing of a torchère by Andrea Brustolon, who was a student of Parodi, see A.M. Spazzi et al., Andrea Brustolon 1662-1732, 'Il Michelangelo del legno', Milan, 2009, p. 226, fig. 86. A very similar pair of wooden dolphins, formerly in the Collection of J. Pierpont Morgan, are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (07.225.67a, b). That pair was conceived as part of a series of four by Fillipo Maria Mongiardino for the Palazzo Spinola in Genoa, in 1736 and likewise reflect the influence of Parodi. Although not of the same form and serving a different purpose, it is interesting to note the similarities between the present pair of carvings and the dolphins decorating a center table in the Palazzo del Principe, Genoa, which have similar upturned open mouths and the feather-like carved scales over the eyes, see A. González-Palacios, Il Mobile in Liguria, Genoa, 1996, p. 96, fig. 111.