AN ITALIAN BRONZE FIGURE OF THE FARNESE FLORA

This bronze is a reduction of the antique marble formerly in the Farnese Collection in Rome, a typical cast made for 'Grand Tourists'. Its competent light cast and subtle detailing, for instance to the drapery, places it stylistically close to the work of Giuseppe Boschi, as opposed to the heavier bronzes of the same subject and size cast in Zoffoli's workshop. This bronze dates before 1800, when the original marble was removed to Naples and the original wreath was substituted by a bouquet of flowers (F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique, Yale, 1982, pp.217, fig.113).