ATTRIBUTED TO THE 'SCANDALOSA' MASTER, NAPLES, LATE 17TH OR EARLY 18TH CENTURY

Works such as present lot were likely intended to remind viewers of their mortality and the transience of life. It is attributed to the unknown master of a similar bust referred to as ‘La Donna Scandalosa’ housed in the Oratorio of the Compagnia dei Bianchi della Giustizia, in Naples. The decaying face, rendered with gruesome realism in coloured wax, is part of an iconographic tradition rooted in Christian ideas of morality that warned against fixations on vanity and material possessions by highlighting their impermanence and the ugly fate of sinners. This type of moralising imagery was particularly popular in the Baroque period during the Counter-Reformation. However, the work does not only demonstrate contemporary fascinations with the morbid but also with the anatomical and the artist’s desire to accurately portray the decay of human flesh.