AN ITALIAN MICROMOSAIC PORTRAIT PLAQUE

Born to a Roman noble family in the late 16th century, Beatrice Cenci fatefully conspired with her stepmother to bludgeon her malicious and lecherous father. Her subsequent execution made her one of the most beloved tragic heroines of Roman history throughout the centuries, ultimately becoming a popular subject of poems, dramas and novels, including The Cenci by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The mosaicist Raffaele Cocchi was paid 550 scudi in 1825 for another mosaic picture representing la Cenci; which was later given to King Ludwig I by Pope Pius VIII in 1829. After two world wars the whereabouts of King Ludwig’s mosaic of Beatrice Cenci remains unknown, but it is speculated to be the example listed in J. H. Gabriel, Micormosaics Private Collections, 2016, No. 8, p. 44-14