Why Legros rather than Foggini carved the 'St Bartholomew' for the Lateran: new documents for the statue in the nave

• Autores: Anne Lise Desmas
• Localización: Burlington magazine, ISSN 0007-6287, Vol. 146, Nº 1221, 2004, págs. 796-805
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The contract for the statue of St Bartholomew in the Lateran, Rome, sheds new light on its creator. Signed by Pierre Legros on October 13, 1705, and now in the archive of the Corsini family Florence, Italy, the contract was discovered with a note on the price of the marble block and three letters sent from Rome during the summer of 1704 to Lorenzo Corsini by his cousin Filippo Patrizi. Initially, the small tabernacle was to be sent from Rome to Florence so that Giovan Battista Foggini could submit a preliminary model of St Bartholomew. However, practical obstacles prevented Foggini from taking on the commission. Legros subsequently accepted the commission “with alacrity,” but raised “some difficulties” over the drawing by Carlo Maratti from which he was supposed to produce a model. The writer goes on to discuss the details of the contract and its implications for the supposed importance of French sculptors in early 18th-century Rome.