Italian, Rome, late 16th century

Decorated with lion heads and three mountains over a star, this impressive quartet of doorknockers alludes to the heraldic emblems of the Peretti family, whose most prominent member was Felice Peretti, later Pope Sixtus V (1521-1590). While still a cardinal, Peretti commissioned a magnificent residence in Rome, the Villa Montalto, which passed into the hands of his nephew, Cardinal Alessandro Peretti, before the family died out and the Villa was eventually destroyed in the late 19th century.

Datable to the late 16th century, the present doorknockers were almost certainly commissioned by Sixtus V or his nephew, perhaps for the Villa Montalto or one of the numerous buildings constructed under his prolific papacy. Stylistically they relate to a pair of large candelabra bearing the Peretti arms in the basilica of Sant’Andrea della Valle, as well as a comparable candlestick by Orazio Censore in Sta Trinità dei Pellegrini, which includes similarly rendered lions on its base (see Montagu, op. cit., p. 49, fig. 54). Alvar Gonzales-Palacios (referenced below) has tentatively proposed the papal bronze founder Bastiano Torrigiani (c. 1542-1596) as a candidate for the facture of the present doorknockers. Torrigiani is documented to have created a bronze bust of the Pope, a version of which is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (inv. no. A.40:0, 1-1950).

RELATED LITERATURE

J. Montagu, Roman Baroque Sculpture: The Industry of Art, New Haven and London, 1989

The present lot is the subject of an expertise by Alvar Gonzales-Palacios, dated March 2004.

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