Lot 5: Circle of Pietro Baratta, Italian (1659-1729) A late 17th century alabaster group of the Pieta

Christ slumped across the body of the Virgin, with a putto crying to the left side and His crown of thorns on the ground, on a naturalistic integral base above a Tavira Breccia marble moulded plinth, 30.5cm high (12" high)

The subject of the Pieta, with one or more mourning putti, all the participants having their faces contorted with grief and set in an elaborate surrounding of rocks and scrubby plants, is one that was much loved in North-Eastern Italy and there are examples by various sculptors on a monumental scale in several of the main churches: for example by Filippo Parodi in Santa Giustina, Padua; another, signed by Enrico Merengo, in the chapel of the Monte di Pieta [savings bank] in Udine; and a third without a putto, by Pietro Baratta in the Istituto Canal-Marovich in Venice (see Simone Guerriero, Per un repertorio della scultura veneta del Sei e Settecento. I, in Arte Veneta, 2011, p. 205 f.). An example on a reduced scale such as this, carved in alabaster in order to render the minute details of the grief-stricken faces and the crown of thorns, and mounted on a contrasting shaped plinth of pink mottled marble (suggestive of the bloody death of the Saviour), would have been made for private devotion, possibly in the family chapel of some palace on the Grand Canal, or a country villa on the mainland