Saint John the Evangelist
By Giovan Battista Maini (attributed), after a design by Camillo Rusconi (with variations)
The San Giovanni Evangelista of the Museo Ginori is the white porcelain translation of a figure mentioned in the eighteenth-century Inventory of Models of the manufactory, which records a “S. Giovanni Evangelista with an open book under the left arm and an eagle on the base.” Jennifer Montagu has recently proposed identifying the sculptor Giovan Battista Maini as the author of the prototype of our specimen, whose compositional design is attributed to Camillo Rusconi, with whom he is presumed to have collaborated in Rome on the creation of the Apostles in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano.
The porcelain of the Museo Ginori shares points of connection with a gilt bronze statue of the same subject made in 1766 by the silversmith Leandro Gagliardi for Cardinal Flavio Chigi, now at the Art Institute of Chicago (h 55 cm). Aside from dimensional differences and some variants in the modeling, it is clear that the two pieces, produced at different times, derive from a common prototype, likely to be identified as an earlier model made by Gagliardi himself. We know that plaster casts of Apostles figures arrived from Rome to Livorno in August 1754 and that some of these had been made for Carlo Ginori from molds never used before then. This type of artifact demonstrates the interest of the Doccia Manufactory in creating porcelain translations not only from ancient art and late Baroque Florentine art but also from models derived from sculptural examples by eighteenth-century Roman artists.
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The San Giovanni Evangelista of the Museo Ginori is the white porcelain translation of a figure mentioned in the eighteenth-century Inventory of Models of the manufactory, which records a “S. Giovanni Evangelista with an open book under the left arm and an eagle on the base.” Jennifer Montagu has recently proposed identifying the sculptor Giovan Battista Maini as the author of the prototype of our specimen, whose compositional design is attributed to Camillo Rusconi, with whom he is presumed to have collaborated in Rome on the creation of the Apostles in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano.
The porcelain of the Museo Ginori shares points of connection with a gilt bronze statue of the same subject made in 1766 by the silversmith Leandro Gagliardi for Cardinal Flavio Chigi, now at the Art Institute of Chicago (h 55 cm). Aside from dimensional differences and some variants in the modeling, it is clear that the two pieces, produced at different times, derive from a common prototype, likely to be identified as an earlier model made by Gagliardi himself. We know that plaster casts of Apostles figures arrived from Rome to Livorno in August 1754 and that some of these had been made for Carlo Ginori from molds never used before then. This type of artifact demonstrates the interest of the Doccia Manufactory in creating porcelain translations not only from ancient art and late Baroque Florentine art but also from models derived from sculptural examples by eighteenth-century Roman artists.
