35,5 x 23cm
early eighteenth century
Maternity
Ivory, black Belgian marble and yellow Siena marble, 35,5 x 23 cm
This plaque isolates a suggestive image of motherhood, totemic in its prowess, imaginative in the attractive vagueness of the choice of materials. There is in fact an underlying sharing between the symbolism of the figure and the plastic-sculptural preciousness that defines its details. The marbles used here, together with the ivory that structures the main part of the sculpture, reveal the particular fervor with which already at the beginning of the previous century the cabinets and studios of erudite collectors had begun to crowd in an exhausting race to obtain the most prestigious piece. In the present case, the ivory allows for an anatomical restitution of overbearing strength, in which the skill in carving is fundamental to define with brilliant plasticity the high relief of mother and child.
The black marble of Belgium, a rare material with an unparalleled shade of shadowy darkness, is extracted only from quarries located along the French border; divided into subcategories, at present the large antique type of the North is recognizable. The yellow marble of Siena, on the other hand, thanks to the constant golden-reddish veining that covers the ochre background, qualifies as a very prestigious piece within Italian soil. The tested use of this marble pair coloristically encloses the central ivory, formally exalting it in a crescendo of contrast and luminosity.
The iconography of motherhood anthropologically contains a panistic reflection on the Whole: if with the Christian age, in Western art, this has coincided preferentially with the Virgin-Child couple, the present one traces the classical-paganizing gravity pre-existing to the Christian solution, bringing to completion the gestation of the prehistoric Venuses. Here we pay homage to the ancestral bond between mother and child, the generative principle of the very order of the world, in a timeless chime of the renewal of life.
The object is in good condition

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