A Small Micromosaic Plaque with the Head of Jupiter Otricoli, by Clemente Ciuli, Signed Dated 1808

signed and dated on the left side edge: C Ciuli Rño. Fl'A 1808, within gilt wood Italian 17th century circular frame.

Old repairs to his left side of his chest and his left cheek and temple.
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RELATED LITERATURE

J. Hanisee Gabriel, The Gilbert Collection. Micromosaics, London, 2000, pp. 35-36, 100, no. 44

Ciuli is mentioned by Paul Marmottan (Les arts en Toscane sous Napoléon. La Princesse Elisa, Paris, 1901, p. 114) as one of the most celebrated Roman mosaicists during the period of the French occupation. Few mosaics by Ciuli have been recorded but a signed and dated mosaic of a head of Bacchus on a snuff-box by Adrien-Jean-Maximilien Vachette is in the Gilbert Collection (Gabriel, op.cit., no. 44) and another signed example of his work, a bust of Jupiter signed and dated 1803, also on a snuff-box, is in the Museo Napoleonico, Rome (Gabriel, op.cit., p.36, fig.8). The head is taken from a Roman marble bust of Jupiter of Otricoli in the Vatican museum.

Prior to Pope Pius VII attending the coronation of Napoleon in Paris in 1804, Antonio Canova was asked to draft a list of diplomatic gifts that the Pope could present upon his arrival. This list included a variety of miscromosaics. Napoleon's brother, Prince Joseph Bonaparte, later king of Naples and Spain, recieved a mosaic with the head of Jupiter, the aforementioned piece now in the Museo Napoleonico, Rome. G. A. Guattani, in his encyclopaedic record of the art and antiques of Rome  written 1806-1819, described a similar head of Jupiter, perhaps the present piece or the one given by Pope Pius VII, as a "masterpiece of the monochrome technique" (op.cit., p.36):

It is essential to record in these memoirs the name of another skiful practitioner of minature mosaics, Signor Clemente Ciuli, residing at no. 71, Piazza di Spagna. We have  seen a work of his that may be described as the 'non plus ultra' of monochrome work, or mosaics of one colour. On commission he has made the head of the celebrated  colossal Jupiter formerly in the Salone Rotondo of the Museo Pio-Clementino, now in Paris. The minute scale, the uniformity and the invisible joining of pieces, suggests a drawing in chiaroscuro rather than a mosaic: and it should be noted that there could be no more difficult subject for a mosaic than such a Jupiter, in view of the difficulty of rendering that thick head of hair, and majestic beard, so well arranged, modelled and amassed by the ancient sculptor, that in this divine head is a masterpiece of human skill. Notwithstanding, the imitation made by Ciuili appears to be also of marble; nor can one understand how these marvellous tiny tesserae create the impression fo the finest lines of the brush of a miniaturist.

The present micromosaic, like the one in Rome, was executed in the early style that, with the use of shadowing, attempted to create the illusion of sculpture.