Francesco Fontebasso is one of the protagonists of the extraordinary painting season of the Venetian eighteenth century: he is one of those "traveling painters" who - from Ricci to Pellegrini, from Rosalba to Tiepolo, from Canaletto to Bellotto - once again art of the city a European role. Very active cooler, skilled decorator, excellent painter, he ranges from everyday life scenes to devotional paintings, from historical representations to portraits, also demonstrating great skills and mastery of the most diverse techniques in graphics. 

Fontebasso's training takes place in Sebastiano Ricci's workshop, a stable reference throughout his career, continuing then in Rome at the Academy of San Luca (1728) and in Bologna. Traces of these phases remain in the classical imprint, in the full-bodied plasticism and in the perspective-architectural structures of the Emilian quadraturistic tradition that will remain constant in its production. Back in Venice, he lets himself be conquered by the impetuous air and the violent chiaroscuro effects of the young Giambattista Tiepolo. He begins by working on religious themes for the Manins, first in the chapel of the Villa di Passariano (1732) and then in Venice in the Jesuit church, where he creates two compartments in the ceiling with Elijah kidnapped in heaven and The angels appear to Abraham (1734), in whose influence from Tiepolo is evident. In the spring of 1736, shortly after his wedding with Angela Maria Belli, he received the first important commission outside Venice, for fresco decorations in the church of SS. Annunziata in Trento. The lively lunette with The Apotheosis of Venice, exhibited here in Ca 'Rezzonico (in the small room - adjacent to this one where the exhibition is set up - which leads to the rooms dedicated to the frescoes by Giandomenico Tiepolo from the villa di Zianigo), where the Serenissima is depicted as an elegant richly dressed lady bowing to the Virgin and Child and to San Marco.

After about twenty years, in 1759, he will get another important assignment in Trento for 19 canvases inspired by the Old and New Testament for the great hall and the refectory of the Buon Consiglio Castle. But the happiest moment in Fontebasso's career is that of the great decoration, when, around the middle of the century, he becomes, thanks also to the distance or the unavailability of Tiepolo, one of the most requested painters by the Venetian nobility, in a period of great ferment. decorative that seems to want to contrast the sunset of the Serenissima. For Francesco, the commissions follow one another at a fast pace: the Duodos, the Bernards, the Boldus, the Barbarigos, the Contarini turn to him to stage joyful compositions on the ceilings of their homes and in the country villas. in St. Petersburg, where Francis is called in the spring of 1761 by the Empress Elizabeth to decorate the ceiling of the church of the Winter Palace. With the trip to Russia the artistically happiest period of the artist's activity ends, even if, on his return, official recognitions, such as the election to the Presidency of the Academy (1768), consecrate him among the leaders of the Venetian school . The production of the last few years has, in fact, more polished forms, as in the series of four canvases of the church of San Francesco della Vigna (1765) in which there is a stylistic stiffening aimed at images of cold elegance, far from the previous palpitating creations and tangible concreteness.

The painting studied here refers to a version with variants of the same subject kept at the Guglielmo da Saliceto hospital in Piacenza.

The attribution to Fontebasso is due to Eugenio Riccomini (see Ceschi Lavagetto, 1981, p. 51).

John Gibson RA is best known for his exquisite depictions of figures from classica mythology, working in the neoclassical tradition of Antonio Canova (1757 – 1822) and Berthel Thorvaldsen (1770 – 1844), in Rome. He was perhaps the leading British sculptor of the nineteenth century and enjoyed the patronage of high-profile clients including: Queen Victoria of Great Britain, the Duke of Devonshire, Count Erwein of Schönborn, Alessandro Torlonia and Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. In 1833 Gibson was elected Associate of the Royal Academy in London and five years later was sworn in as a full member, exhibiting there between 1816 and 1864. He had an illustrious artistic career and received many international honours, including the Légion d'Honneur, which was awarded to him by the French government in 1864.

 John Gibson arrived in Rome on 20th October 1817, aged 27, with four letters of recommendation from Sir George D’Aguilar, Henry Fuseli (1741 – 1825), John Flaxman (1755 – 1826) and from Lord Brougham. The impact the ‘Eternal City’ had on the ambitious young sculptor cannot be overstated. For at this time, it was the centre of the contemporary and classical art world and had an unrivalled abundance of ancient masterpieces, which sculptors could copy and take direct inspiration from, on a daily basis. Gibson once famously declared: “I thank God for every morning that opens my eyes in Rome” and indeed, he remained a resident of the city his whole life, leaving only for important commissions (for example, to carve his two portrait statues of Queen Victoria in 1844 and 1850) and during the revolutionary events of 1847-1849, during which time he moved to Lucca.

 In addition to the antiquities of Rome, one of the greatest artistic influences on Gibson was Antonio Canova, who was celebrated as Europe’s leading artist and regarded as the ‘Phidias of his time’. During his education in Canova’s bustling studio between 1817 and 1822, he had the opportunity to work in clay. He would have observed the practice of Canova making small terracotta models, or bozzetti, which were then worked up into a full-scale clay model, to be finally cast in plaster and enlarged by his studio assistants for translation into marble, using a curious contraption known as a ‘pointing machine’. There exists a fascinating account of the young John Gibson learning to work with clay in Canova’s studio, under the watchful eye of his main assistant Antonio D’Este:

 “At my own request Canova allowed me to copy his fine Pugilist – the marble statue in the Vatican. I began with great zeal to model my copy from the cast in the studio. After I had worked at the clay for a few days, down it all fell! It seems that my master had observed to his foreman, Signor Desti (Antonio D’Este), that my figure must fall, ‘for you see’, said he, ‘that he knows nothing of the skeleton work – but let him proceed, and when his figure comes down, show him how the mechanical part is done.’ So when the model fell, a blacksmith was called in, and the iron work was made, with numerous crosses of wood and wire.” Gibson also perhaps learned a great deal about the art of clay modelling during a brief time working under Joseph Nollekens, who is famed for the bravura of his terracotta ‘pensieri’ – as he referred to them. Indeed, a model of Theseus and the centaur by Gibson was included in the sale of Nolleken’s effects at Christies in 1823.

 Canova was a huge influence on Gibson during his early years in Rome. Not only did he support him with artistic and technical advice, but he also assisted in establishing the framework for the young sculptor’s career. Gibson was affectionately called the ‘British Canova’ by many and referred to himself as ‘Canova’s last pupil’ in a letter to Antonio Gacini, Secretary of the Royal Academy in Milan in 1861: “The first instruction which I received in my art was from an Italian. It was Canova whose pupil I became in the year 1817 and studied under him for five years when he died. I was his last pupil.”

 However, Gibson was no mere copyist. His work is markedly distinct from the great Italian’s and has a softer, perhaps more human quality. John Gibson was one of the few remaining exponents of the ‘pure’ neoclassical style of sculpture, who sought to achieve ‘ideal’ classical forms, while on the whole, his contemporaries and rivals were pursuing notions of formal naturalism, or ‘verismo’, such as depicting modern subjects wearing the contemporary fashions of the day.

Inspired by the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717 – 1768), Gibson aimed to achieve ‘the sublime and the purest beauty’ in his sculpture through study of the human form perfected to the standards of classical sculpture. The strong influence of the antique can be seen in the composition of the present work. The inspiration for the general form of this terracotta Narcissus was perhaps taken from the Capitoline Gaul or Dying Gladiator (fig.1), while the Centocelle Eros of the Vatican (fig.2) could have provided a model for the downward tilting attitude of the head and the thick curls of shoulder-length hair.

By 1821, Gibson had established his own studio in the Via Fontanella, just off the artistic hub of the via Babuino. The first major work of his own conception was his Sleeping Shepherd Boy  from 1824 (fig.3), made for Lord George Cavendish. Gibson reinterpreted this theme a number of times, making other versions for the Duke of Northumberland and a Mr Lenox of New York. This terracotta Narcissus is depicted in a similarly languid pose and adopts a comparably relaxed countenance. Their heavy heads are bowed, both in drowsy dream-states, full unconscious slumber in the case of the Shepherd Boy, while Narcissus is caught in a trance-like day-dream, as he stares into the water below, enamoured with the beautiful appearance of his own reflection. Their torsos are also gently ‘crunched’, with their abdominal muscles engaged in a similar contorsion (fig.4). Anatomically perfect, both models demonstrate the education Gibson received, not just from studying the ancient models which of course abounded in his adopted city, but the anatomy classes he attended in Britain, led by Dr Vose, who dissected human corpses for his students.

In 1830 Gibson is known to have made a Narcissus in marble for Lord Barrington and subsequently made two others for a Mr Evrington and a Mr Fort of Manchester. He returned to the theme again, sending a Narcissus to the Royal Academy as a submission for his diploma work in 1838 (fig.5). In Ovid’s version of the story of Narcissus and Echo in his Metamorphosis, the nymph Echo fell in love with a beautiful young hunter called Narcissus. But her love was not returned and Echo was condemned by the goddess Juno to repeat only the last words that were spoken to her. As a punishment for spurning Echo’s love, Narcissus was made to fall in love with his own reflection and expired gazing at himself in a pool of water. In his place a flower grew and which took on his name. It is a tragic tale and one of the most famous surviving from antiquity and so would have been an enticing subject for Gibson. The inspiration for the Royal Academy’s example was apparently the sight of a boy sitting on the edge of a fountain that Gibson noticed during a morning walk along the Monte Pinciano, thus satisfyingly combining an observed genre scene with a well-known classical allegory.

 The handling of the head and facial details of the terracotta Narcissus appears to be very similar to the marble work of the same subject that Gibson sent to the Royal Academy in 1838 (fig.6 and 6a) and also his Cupid disguised as a Shepherd Boy at Yale (fig.7). Specifically, their slim, pointed noses, their small, plump, slightly parted lips and their heavy-lidded, blank, pupil-less eyes – in the manner of the ancients. The clay figure’s remarkable head of deep, shoulder-length curls also has much in common with those carved by Gibson for his marble Narcissus, but also to his Love tormenting the soul, at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. It is also interesting to compare the positioning, modelling and anatomical style of the hands and feet of the terracotta model to the marble Narcissus and the Sleeping Shepherd Boy, respectively - for their smooth, yet pronounced, squared-off knuckles and deeply incised nails must surely have been made by the same master.

 When one compares the physiognomic details of this newly discovered terracotta with other major works from Gibson’s oeuvre, the comparisons are so striking that it seems almost certain that the present terracotta is by the hand of John Gibson. The model therefore represents an important art historical discovery for scholars and collectors of European neoclassical sculpture: it adds another model to Gibson’s oeuvre, revealing a different conception of the subject of Narcissus based on ancient archetypes available to Gibson in Rome. In conjunction with this, it also expands our understanding of the types of media that he used in his own artistic practice and increases our appreciation of the skill and facility he had in modelling clay.

The figure of Apostle Peter in the Vatican, seated on a throne, is one of the few surviving monumental bronze statues from the Middle Ages. Holding the symbolic keys in his left hand and giving a blessing with his right, the bronze was originally made for the apse of the oratory of San Martino (c. 1290) by the sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio. From 1605 it was placed in front of the first column on the right of the dome in St Peter's. Bernini later designed a magnificent gilded bronze throne as a shrine to encase this venerated relic, the chair from which, by tradition, Saint Peter himself had preached. 

The fashion for reproductions of the most famous antique models in Italy developed in the 18th century, intended for wealthy European customers wishing to bring back a souvenir of the Grand Tour. The brothers and bronziers Giovanni and Giacomo Zoffoli were based in Rome during the second half of the 18th century and gained a reputation by reproducing the very high quality bronze statuettes, particularly made for Grand Tourists. In 1795 the brothers published a catalogue of the fifty-nine models available for purchase, a copy of which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London which was not accessible while writing this entry. 

The monumental statue of St. Peter has been one of the most venerated bronzes in Rome for centuries, as evidenced by the rubbed extended foot of the figure, and no other copies of it by Giovanni Zoffoli appear to exist. 

RELATED LITERATURE
H. Honour, 'Bronze statuettes by Giacomo & Giovanni Zoffoli' in Connoisseur, CXLVIII, 1961, pp. 194-200