The Infant Christ

Bronze, gold-orange patina
Firenze, first third of the 18th Century
Massimiliano Soldani-Benzi (1656-1740) (circle)


H 20 x L 13 x P 13 cm
H 7 7/8 x L 5 1/8 x P 5 1/8 inch














Adorable, chubby children - mostly little boys – were almost as prominent a part of the stock-in-trade of the sculptor-medallist Soldani in Florence as they had been of his predecessor François Duquesnoy in the previous century in Rome: indeed, so typical of his work were they, that the title-page of G .P. Bellori’s life of the sculptor (1672) is illustrated with an engraving of an infant genius carving a portrait-bust of him.

Though often shown asleep and face down, sometimes they are awake and half sitting up, with their arms apart and holding occasional attributes identifying them as the Baby Jesus, but none is in the appealing pose of the present statuette, with both arms held beseechingly upward to a missing third party, presumable a kneeling figure of His mother the Virgin Mary.

When Soldani had been a student at the Medici Academy in Rome in the 1670s he cannot have failed to come across moulds and plaster-casts of Duquesnoy’s pioneering efforts, if not original statuettes in bronze or ivory. Secular in origin, having been the genii omnipresent in Roman art, we are told that Poussin avidly studied the variety of poses in Duquesnoy’s lively little models to enliven his own paintings. From the days of Donatello in the Renaissance, given wings, these little boys served either as Cupids [amores] in scenes from pagan mythology; or sprites [spiritelli] in contemporary theories about psychology and physiology; or as cherubim in Biblical scenes.

The present statuette is unpublished and appears to be unique: its surface sheen and illusionistic texturing of the cloth in which the child is wrapped, combined with its casting technique [visible from below] point to Soldani as it probable author. While he is generally associated in northern Europe and the USA with mythological, allegorical,or occasionally historical subjects (e.g. the magnificent series of the Four Seasons in the Royal Collection, Windsor), this is because these were what appealed to the British grandees who imported many examples, because they were living in a Protestant country, where the Catholic threat survived until the resounding defeat of the ill-fated coup attempted by Bonnie Prince Charlie in1745.

However, in Soldani’s native Florence, Roman Catholicism of an extreme kind flourished, especially under the later Grand Dukes and especially their Duchesses and public funds were spent lavishly on elaborate and precious works of art to celebrate the favourite saints, martyrs and their – often gruesome - miracles. This was especially true of the very last of the Medici dynasty, Anna Maria Luisa, Dowager Electress Palatine, who - after a successful marriage abroad upon the decease of her husband - returned home a mourning widow, who succeeded her brother Gian Gaston as ruler of Florence, and turned to her Faith for solace.
It is within her court circle of painters that one can find the new iconography of the Infant Christ reaching our beseechingly in welcome to Mary or to especially devout saints: for instance in a painting by Jacopo da Empoli of St Francis of Assisi with Mary and the Infant Jesus, in the church of San Gaetano, Florence.

Soldani has virtually made an excerpt from the painting, in which this very detail might well have been painted from a three-dimensional model like Duquesnoy’s ones. The Child lies on an oblong cushion, here embroidered, and they're coloured, propped up sideways on a cushion that is enveloped completely inside the upper end of his – now loosened - swaddling-clothes.

The image reminds one of the actual life-size sculptures of the Baby Jesus (often in ceramic or plaster), if not painted wooden and wax dolls, with real, luxurious clothing that by tradition were laid in the manger on Christmas morning: these were the focus in large cribs, populated with adoring shepherds and kings, and celebrated with duly devout ritual, prayers and singing, not only by nuns, but also by lay confraternities, or within the homes of the better-off (one well-known type of model had been produced in the Quattrocento by Donatello’s follower, Desiderio da Settignano). While the child may be ‘meek and mild’ he is clad in smart garments such as befit a baby King. This sort of pomp and ceremony were what attracted grandees such as Anna Maria Luisa to participate in the lavish patronage of Christian imagery, often bedizened with precious or semi-precious stones and burnished gilding, with which they could identify.

Two examples may be adduced to indicate how closely this child adheres to Soldani’s normal type of putto, one being secular: the children cavorting with swans that form bizarre, ornamental handles for two urns in the Museo degli Argenti in the Pitti Palace, Florence; and the other strongly Christian, the impressive life-size bronze group of The infant Christ with St John the Baptist in the same museum, of circa. 1690.

An analogy for the sort of scenario for which this bronze statuette may have been intended is to be found in the work of the Court Sculptor who was Soldani’s hated rival, Giambattista Foggini: the remains of a whole crib-group at about the same scale which would have been made in bronze are to be found in some wax casts preserved in the Museum of Ceramics at the Ginori Manufactory in Doccia (Lankheit 1982, figs. 105-6; p. 103, Inventory p. 5, No. 31: Un gruppo rappresentante la Capannuccia. Di Gio. Batta. Foggini, in cera).

This tends to corroborate the connection of the present model with Soldani, for the moulds for his models were – like Foggini’s - sold posthumously by his heir to Marchese Ginori for his pioneering porcelain enterprise.