Attributed to Giovanni Battista Foggini (1652-1725), Italian, Florence, early 18th century

Overall the condition of the terracotta is good. There is some wear and dirt to the surface consistent with age. There are a few chips and losses including to some tips of the manes, both ears, the proper left shoulder and at the back right corner of the base. There is an area with restored, stable fissures around the body just above the hips.
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Difficult as it is to date sculptural representations of animals, the spontaneous modelling of the present terracotta Lion suggests a typically baroque sensibility. The specific relation of the lion to its rectangular pedestal implies, moreover, that this was not merely a study after life: the lion must have been conceived as a model for some kind of architectural setting.

In its pose, the fierce animal comes very close to the lions drawn by Giovanni Battista Foggini (1652-1725) in three designs the great Florentine sculptor and architect produced as models for a complex commemorative monument to Queen Anne which was never executed but which occupied the sculptor's energies in the last ten years or so of his life. If executed, it would have been one of the most important accomplishments of public statuary in 18^th-century Europe. Foggini cast a large bronze statue of the queen which was almost finished by 1725. Already in 1715 he had conceived of a more complex structure (for Lincoln's Inn Fields) to be surmounted by this colossal effigy as is testified by the above-mentioned three autograph drawings. One of them (Friedman 1976, fig. 10) shows a lion turning his head to the right in a way very close to the present one but unfortunately it is impossible to verify whether he also showed his tongue as in the terracotta statuette: in fact, the whereabouts of this design are not known. Two further drawings in the Uffizi (Friedman fig. 7 and 9) show lions placed in similar poses to the sides of the stairs leading to the upper level of the monument. No lions by Foggini are known but the almost identical pose of the animal in the terracotta and in these three designs is a strong argument in favour of an attribution to Foggini.

We are grateful to Dimitrios Zikos for his help in cataloguing this lot.

RELATED LITERATURE
L. Monaci, Disegni di Giovan Battasti Foggini (1652-1725), cat. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence, 1977, pp. 88-90, nos. 85-86 and 88, figs. 70-72; T.F. Friedman, 'Foggini's statue of Queen Anne', K. Lankheit (ed.), Kunst des Barock in der Toskana. Studien zur Kunst unter den letzten Medici, Munich,1976, p.46 and 48, fig. 10