Giovanni Battista Piamontini

Provenance:
Marquesses Gerini.

This sculpture of a faun by Giovanni Battista Piamontini was commissioned by the aristocratic Gerini family who were renowned and sophisticated patrons of the arts in 18th century Florence. The Marchese Gerini wanted this sculpture as well as one of Milo of Croton by Giovanni Battista’s father, Giuseppe, in order to adorn the entrance to their newly enlarged palazzo with its new grand staircase. The model for the work approved by Andrea and Carlo Francesco Gerini to which the 1761 contract refers must have been a statuette by Giuseppe Piamontini, who had studied with by Ercole Ferrata (1610 – 1686) in Rome while he was restoring the ‘Queen of Sweden’s Faun’, a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original belonging to the second school of Pergamus (160-150 B.C.) discovered in Rome around 1675 during an archeological excavation at a sculptor´s studio and restored shortly afterwards by Ferrata.