Vittoriano
In the late seventeenth century, following Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s death, his fame declined. With the rise of Neoclassicism, theorists such as Francesco Milizia and Johann Joachim Winckelmann criticized the Baroque style as excessive and theatrical.
Nevertheless, engravings and prints helped to disseminate the artist’s innovations, and his masterpieces continued to be studied and admired.
In the academies of Rome, young Italian and foreign artists copied and reinterpreted Bernini’s works through drawings, casts, and plaster models, regarding them as sources of inspiration and learning tools.
Many copies and replicas of his works, made in various materials and sizes, circulated on the Roman and international art markets, fueling demand from collectors and patrons.
Within this context fits the work presented here—likely an academic model or a terracotta created as a preliminary study for bronze casting.
Other examples of this kind are kept in the storage rooms of the Museo di Palazzo Venezia, also from the Gorga collection (inv. nos. 13472; 14443/1–2).
