Attributed to Honoré Pellé (1641-1718) Italy, Genoa, circa 1700

Francesco Fabbri, 'Monsieur Onorato/Honore Pellé, uno scultore francese a Genova fra XVII e XVIII secolo', Studi di Storia delle Arti, 14 (2003) p.187, fig.9

This marble is in good, stable condition, however, there are minor chips and losses consistent with age which do not detract from the overall appearence of the marble. There is a repaired break on the base that circles the feet of the Christ figure and column.
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Although born in the French Alps, Honoré Pellé seems to have spent most of his working life in Italy. From 1672 Pellé, like Pierre Puget, based himself in Genoa. His work was quickly in demand as far afield as the Spanish and English courts. In 1676 he completed a group of eighty statues for the gallery of the Royal Palace, Madrid, and two busts of Charles II dating from 1682 and 1684 are at Burghley House, Stamford and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. For the Royal Court at Paris he procured marbles from nearby Carrara.

The present statuette can be closely compared to the life-size marble statue of Christ at the column at the Convent of Brignoline, Genoa, which Giuseppe Maria Durazzo commissioned from Pellé on 23 December 1680. In both figures Christ is at once vigorous and vulnerable. The slightly stooped pose challenges the sharply defined musculature. The drapery looped around the waist and the feet and the bound hands with their defined veins seen in the present marble are close to the life-size model of the same subject. A dating of the present marble to the years around 1700 is indicated by a comparison with the treatment of the figure in Pellé's gilt bronze statuette of St. John the Baptist in Genoa cathedral.

RELATED LITERATURE
S. Lami, Dictionnaire des sculpteurs de l'Ecole francaise sous le regne de Louis XIV (Paris, reprint 1970), p. 401; Parma Armani et al., La scultura a Genova (Genoa, 1988) pp. 207-8 & pp.168-9, fig. 213; V. Belloni, La grand scultura a Geova (Genoa, 1988) pp.145-151;  L. Cervetto, Il Tesoro della Metropolitana di Genova, ill. storica. Genova, (Genoa, 1982) p.54