Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Descanso en la huída a Egipto [Rest on the Flight into Egypt]

Image caption
GIOVANNI MARIA MORLAITER

Descanso en la huída a Egipto [Rest on the Flight into Egypt]

  • 1735-1738
  • Terracotta relief
  • 55,5 x 46 cm
  • Cat. E_61
  • Acquired in 1982
By:
Isabel Tejeda

The Banco de España collection has two terracotta reliefs by Giovanni Maria Morlaiter. Historian Francesco Sorce records that Morlaiter used to make the preliminary models for his works in terracotta. It therefore seems likely that these two pieces were the models for the reliefs in the Chapel of our Lady of the Rosary (Basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo), which occupied much of the artist's time throughout the 1730s.

The Dominican Friars commissioned the most prominent sculptors working in Venice at the time to decorate the presbytery of the chapel.

As well as the final pieces in Venice, several versions of the two themes are now housed in other collections. The Metropolitan Museum of New York has a terracotta of similar dimensions, depicting the same scene of the Flight Into Egypt, although the example in the Banco de España Collection is technically more emphatic and energetic, the movement of the figures is better resolved and there is greater contrast between light and shadow. Sorce sees the clear influence of Sebastiano Ricci's painting on the style and iconography of both of the gospel themes, with clear parallels between Jesus Among the Doctors and the painting on the same theme by Ricci in the oratory of the Villa Guarnieri in Tomo (Feltre). He argues that Morlaiter's Rest on the Flight into Egypt combines elements from Ricci's repertoire with others typical of Veronese.

Isabel Tejeda

 
By:
Isabel Tejeda
Giovanni Maria Morlaiter
Venice 1699 - Venice 1781

The family of Giovanni Maria Morlaiter —also known as Gianmaria Morlaiter— traced its roots back to the Puster Valley in the Alps. He had two sons, both of whom also became artists: Michelangelo, a painter, and Gregorio, a sculptor. Morlaiter trained under the Venetian sculptor Alvise Tagliapietra and began his professional career during the second decade of the eighteenth century, in a late Baroque style of great technical virtuosity akin to Rococo. He is best known for the depictions of fabrics in his work. Morlaiter was a founding member (1750), director (1756) and professor (1760) of the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. He received numerous commissions in his home city of Venice, which was undergoing a period of economic bonanza thanks to its trading links, but he also made sculptures for Brescia, Padua, Treviso, Graz, Dubrovnik, Split and St. Petersburg.

Francesco Sorce catalogues the following major pieces by the Venetian artist: Presentation of Mary and St. Augustine in the church of St. Ignatius (Dubrovnik, Croatia, 1730); The Miracle of the Mule and Apparition of the Christ Child to Saint Anthony of Padua in the church of Santa Lucia (Venice, 1730); Jesus Disputing with the Doctors in the Temple in the Chapel of our Lady of the Rosary, in the Basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo (Venice, 1735); St. Scholastica and St. Benedict in the church of Santi Biagio e Cataldo de Giudecca (Venice, 1735); the sculptural decoration for the church of the Society of Jesus (ca. 1740-1750); the busts of Pope Benedict XIV and Cardinal Rezzonico in the Basilica of St. Mary of the Assumption (Padua, 1746); the figures of St. Gerolamo Emiliani and Blessed Peter Acotanto in the church of San Rocco (Venice, 1765); and the statues Strength and Prudence in the Gatchina Palace (Russia, 1766).

Isabel Tejeda

 
 
Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 1.