Amore materno. Cere policrome, entro cornice in... Lot n° 42

A young woman, full-length, arms and feet naked, sitting foreshortened on a boulder, feeds with a spoon a half-naked baby, lying on her lap, her shoulders gently supported with her left hand. The perfect oval of the face is gracefully framed by a red cap; the gaze is tenderly turned towards the child. She wears a green bodice tight at the waist, enhancing her turgid breasts; the wide neckline of the white blouse shows off a breast with the nipple, grazed by the stapled hem. The long light yellow skirt, beautifully draped, follows the sinuous hanchement of the figure. At her feet, on the grass, is a crumpled cloth; crouched on the left is a small dog, its muzzle turned towards the delightful maternal picture. On a rocky outcrop covered with grass rests a bowl with gruel. On the left is a leafy tree laden with apples. In the bright sky, in the background, stand out leafy saplings. The newborn baby, rosy and chubby, wearing a crumpled shirt, eats the morsel offered by his mother with satisfaction. The scenetta is modeled to high relief in wax policroma (colored part to impasto, painted part), on an oval plate, verisimilmente, of slate (lacks a close examination). E' enclosed in an oval frame of wood (poplar or fir tree or mahogany s lacks a close examination) with moldings, carved and painted with black color (false ebony); ori- ginal. The arcadian ideal finds in our "storietta" the sign, from a song, of the most extenuated rococo grace; from the other, of the strength of transposition of the ancient Virtue of the "Charity" in a mundane fragment of lived life, even though projected in a dimension of a bucolic dream. The interest "for the simple life is not to be looked for in the country environment; it is not among the people that rises, but among the higher classes; no: in the country, but in the city and in the courts, in an agitated life, in a society by now too civilised and sated" (Hauser). A ductile and vibrant modelling and intense pictorialism animate an idyll, the expression of a consummate technical and formal skill: the imprint of a great master and a select choice of sources of images, ranging from Paris to Venice. Close relationships of cultural-figurative choices, technique and style with works signed and dated, suggest an attribution to Giovan Fiancesco Pieri. A support, in my opinion, to be considered as a sort of signature, I find in the detail of the "little hairy dog crouched", modelled in our "Wax", at the feet of the young woman. Well, I find the identical model and identical compositive intents, in spite of imperceptible variations, in at least two autograph works of the Master: "Peasants drinking and eating", of the Wallace Collection of London; "Pastoral scene", of the Musee D'Unterlinden of Colmar (Alsace, France). For the latter, see A.GONZALEZ-PALACIOS, Giovanni Francesco Pieri, in "Antologia di Belle Arti", Year 1, N. 2, June 1977, p. 141, fig.3. E.J.PYKE,A BIO- GRAPHICAL DICTIONARYOFWAXMODEL-LERS(SUPPLEMENT),LONDON19819pp.XXVII,XXXI,fig.218B.The "storietta",therefore,is to be attributed,- verisimilarly to Giovan Francesco Pieri; to be dated to the first years of his stay in Naples between it 1739-1750. cm 15 x 12