Allegory of The Rising of the Sun

The wax bas-relief with the Allegory of The Rising of the Sun is recorded in the eighteenth-century Inventory of Models of the Doccia Manufactory, along with five other reliefs which, together with this one, make up the series of The Hours of Day and Night, originally composed of six plaques. The bronze version of this series, dated around 1720 and recently traced to a private American collection, has been attributed to the invention of Giovanni Casini, with chasing by Pietro Cipriani. 

The shaping of the perimeter of the bronze reliefs, also found in the wax casts at the Museum of Doccia, suggests that the latter were made from the segmented plaster molds used for casting the plaques. In fact, in addition to having the same dimensions (approximately h 31x39 cm), the casts share the same composition as the bronzes, albeit with some variations in the decorative elements, made on the relief before casting. This confirms that the plaster molds that reached Doccia were taken from the model and not from the plaques in their final version.

The author of the wax casts could be the Florentine sculptor and medallist Anton Filippo Maria Weber, as he was paid by the manufactory on November 20, 1744, for having created a relief depicting the Night, a subject that is part of the series of our plaques.