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marmo

SUPERBAROCCO. ARTE A GENOVA DA RUBENS A MAGNASCO - ROMA - 2022

The two sculptural groups were created by two Genoese sculptors, Bernardo Schiaffino and Francesco Biggi, probably based on designs by Domenico Parodi, the painter who created the frescoes and oversaw the decorative design of this room. Domenico Parodi was the son of the great Baroque sculptor Filippo Parodi, from whom he learned the art of sculpting marble and thinking in three dimensions, even in the creation of his frescoes, giving plasticity and monumentality to forms. The two sculptures were originally intended to be two fountains - the water flowed from a small pipe hidden inside the mouths of the two animals - and were placed in the small “indoor nymphaeum” commissioned by Anton Giulio, according to Brignole-Sale, inside this mezzanine. Here, in fact, by transforming what were normally service rooms, by 1710 the client had a private and totally exclusive apartment set up, embellished with luxurious furnishings and rich decorations. The choice of subjects is motivated by the fact that both episodes constitute two key points, the beginning and the end, of a narrative that covers the entire room, including the wooden doors of the built-in wardrobes, and retraces the salient episodes that mark the mythical origins of Rome: the birth of Helen, Paris' awarding of the apple of discord to Venus, Paris' abduction of Helen and, opposite, Aeneas' flight from Troy, finally arriving at the birth of Romulus and Remus. The marble group, a virtuoso work, illustrates a classical myth of which there are several versions, according to which the union of Leda and Jupiter, in the form of a swan, produced the egg from which the Dioscuri Pollux and the beautiful Helen were born.