Wallace Collection Online - Infant angel with candelabra

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Ferdinando Tacca (1619 - 1686) Infant angel with candelabra Florence, Italy: Date: c. 1647-50

Object Type: Candelabrum

Medium: Bronze copper alloy

Height: 105.5 cm, total
Height: 81 cm, angel
Length: 36.5 cm, base
Width: 25.1 cm, base
Height: 3.8 cm, base

Inv: S138

Location: Sixteenth Century Gallery

S138 and its pair S139 are all that remains of an elaborate Calvary group made by Tacca for the Chapel of the Duke’s palace in Massa, near Carrara in Tuscany, and inventoried in 1662. The group included a second pair of angels as well as a large Cross with the Crucified Christ. It is likely to have been broken up around 1800 when the palace was pillaged by French troops, following Napoleon’s invasion of Italy. Both figures are signed by Ferdinando Tacca in monogram on the drapery around their waist and are in fact his only surviving works. His father Pietro Tacca (1557-1640) was the chief pupil of Giovanni Bologna (Giambologna, 1529-1608) and inherited the workshop established by Giambologna in Florence, on the latter’s death in 1608. Ferdinando in turn inherited the workshop from his father and continued to produce bronze sculptures using models developed by Giambologna or by Pietro Tacca. The lower sections of the candlesticks in these figures, with their bizarre half-female forms, are almost identical to the bases of a Crucifix and set of four matching candlesticks, made by Pietro Tacca and given to the church of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence in 1632 by Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine.

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