Marble bust ofApollo, Venice, 17th century

This imposing bust of Apollo bears all the stylistic characteristics of the work of the Venetian sculptor Giovanni Carati.

Very active in Venice and the Veneto region, Giovanni Carati practised his profession as a sculptor in partnership with Paolo Callalo, with whom he shared a workshop until his premature death in 1695 at the age of forty. His first known work is the Angel adorning the pediment of the altar of Saint Teresa in the Venetian church of the Scalzi, for which he received his first payment on 12 September 1684.
Carati subsequently created a series of statues for the parish church of Villa Vicentina, in Friuli Venezia Giulia, not far from Aquileia. This was undoubtedly the most important project of his career, at least in the sacred field. In 1686, he created five statues for the façade of the church, as well as several others placed on the altar in 1691 (Christ Crucified, the Archangel Saint Michael and the Archangel Raphael). Two other statues of Angels, carved in stone by Carati around 1693 for the church of Sant'Antonio d'Aquillée, illustrate the influence of the examples of the Flemish master Juste Le Court, then leader of Venetian Baroque sculpture, on his work.

The stylistic characteristics of our bust reveal Carati's full adherence to the Venetian sculptural language of the last decades of the 17th century, which incorporated the lessons learnt from the work of Le Court. In fact, our marble was sculpted after a bust of Apollo made by Le Court in the late 1650s for the collection of the procurator Alvise Pisani, displayed in his home at the Procuraties in Piazza San Marco. Carati simplified Le Court's prototype, resulting in a more compact rendering of the volumes.

This bust of Apollo is a particularly important work in the Venetian sculptor's corpus. Despite being in great demand at the time, it is the only work by Carati destined for the private market. It seems clear that our sculptor was at the origin of a much larger production of marbles of this type, intended for the local private market. At least, this is what show the the inventory of sculptures found in Carati's workshop immediately after his death, drawn up by another key figure in Venetian Baroque: Giovanni Bonazza.

Full study by Simone Guerriero available on request