David (after Gian Lorenzo Bernini)
Carlo Fossi
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1901
Materials
Marble
Measurements
273 x 93 x 79 cm
Place of origin
Rome
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 516660
Summary
Marble, David, Carlo Fossi (Italian, active late 19th-early 20th century) after Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Naples 1598 - Rome 1680), 1901. A copy by Carlo Fossi of the marble statue of David by Gian Lorenzo Bernini at the Villa Borghese, Rome. The back of base signed 'C Fossi / copied from Bernini/ Rome 1901'. David, the Israelite shepherd, as an athletic youth depicted moments before delivering the fatal blow to the Philistine giant Goliath with a stone catapulted from his sling. David is nude with the exception of a shepherd's cloak draped around his body and a goatskin bag containing the other four stones David collected from the brook. At David's feet lies the armour of the Israelite King Saul and a harp, an attribute referring to David as Psalmist and musician. Mounted on a marble plinth with inset marble relief of David triumphant over the body of Goliath, holding the giant's severed head, and three inset slate plaques by David Kindersley; two with Lord Fairhaven's monogram under a baron's coronet, the fourth inscribed '2/ June/ 1953', the date of Elizabeth II’s Coronation.
Full description
The original marble was the third of Bernini’s great sculptures for Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1577-1633), all still in the Villa Borghese (it was preceded by Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius and the Rape of Proserpina). Bernini’s own plinth for the David was irregular, with the lyre projecting beyond it, and the toes of David’s right foot gripping the edge of it, to increase the sense of torsion and motion. This effect was lost, when it was bulked out with plaster, to fit the new pedestal created for it in 1910. Very little is known about Carlo Fossi. The English inscription on this copy suggests that Fossi was affiliated with one of a number of Italian workshops making replicas of celebrated Roman sculptures for European and American markets at the turn of the 20th century. Signed works by Carlo Fossi include a full-size marble copy of the Rape of Proserpina after Bernini at the Museo Bellver, Seville, and a copy of Pauline Borghese as Venus Victrix after Antonio Canova in the Villa Borghese (Christie's, The Collector: Silver, 19th Century Furniture, Sculpture & Works of Art, London, sale 14227, lot 590). Alice Rylance-Watson 2019
Provenance
Bequeathed to the National Trust by Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) with the house and the rest of the contents.
Credit line
Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (The National Trust)
Makers and roles
Carlo Fossi, sculptor after Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Naples 1598 – Rome 1680), sculptor