We’ve just had an interesting new find! A pair of 17th century painted plaster pedestals in our collection are nearly identical to stucco versions formerly in the Villa di Vignamaggio.

17th century Italian pedestal brackets, Carlton Hobbs LLC.

Vignamaggio pedestals. (Photo: Pratesi, Scultura Fiorentina, Vol III, 1993. Pl. 428, 429.)

Vignamaggio is a Tuscan villa dating to the 14th century and was owned by the Gherardini family. It has been rumored that the grounds of the villa inspired the landscape for Leonardo da Vinci’s La Gioconda (the Mona Lisa), and that Anton Maria Gherardini’s daughter, Mona Lisa, served as the model.

The Vignamaggio pedestals are illustrated in Giovanni Pratesi’s book, Scultura Fiorentina, supporting sculptures of Jupiter and Juno by Italian artist Giuseppe Piamontini. Piamontini was actively commissioned in the late 17th and early 18th centuries by the Grand Ducal family, especially Prince Ferdinand.

Each pedestal is composed of massive scrolled supports with gaping grotesque masks. The masks, with heavy brows, plaited beards and extended tongues, are crowned with dart headdresses and festoons of fruit. The pedestal then tapers with guilloche and an acanthus leaf decoration on an integral stepped concave-sided plinth. The masks fall in line with the work of Piamontini’s Baroque predecessors Gianlorenzo Bernini and Alessandro Algardi, who also used grimacing faces as decorative devices in their own drawings and sculpture.

We are looking into the possiblity that our pair of pedestals may actually be the very pair from Villa di Vignamaggio. How exciting!