Attributed to Francesco Biggi

As recently elucidated in the 2022 exhibition on the artist (op. cit.), Domenico Parodi employed the talented marble carver Francesco Biggi to execute his primarily graphic designs in three dimensions. The son of the prominent Genoese sculptor Filippo Parodi (1630-1702), Domenico probably received some sculptural training himself but soon shifted his focus on painting, converting his father’s sculpture workshop into a painter’s studio from 1702. There he continued to create designs for sculpture which were carved in marble by Biggi and other sculptural assistants.

Though continuously in Parodi’s shadow and working in his name, Biggi merited his own biography by Carlo Giuseppe Ratti (1737-1795), in which he is described as a hard-working, highly skilled sculptor and devoted teacher. Following a study stay in Rome, Biggi entered the workshop of Filippo Parodi and remained there following the master’s death, upon which he commenced his work for Domenico. Here he mastered a refined sculptural language, marked by a waxy softness drawn from a subdued and decorative interpretation of the work of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

The present bust was formerly part of a group of the Four Seasons sold in Rome in 1987. Illustrated in op. cit. (fig. 24) and there given to Francesco Biggi, after a design by Domenico Parodi, the bust exemplifies the classical elegance and softness Domenico and Biggi brought to Filippo’s sculptural style, as also seen in the statues Biggi carved for the Lower Belvedere, Vienna. 

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