A Laocoon by Filippo Della Valle

This publication discusses a bronze Laocoön recently sold at Bonham’s. Its new owners attributed it to Giuseppe Piamontini (1663–1744) ‘because of its manufacture and its extremely close proximity to the Doccia model’, the model employed for a porcelain Laocoön produced in the factory set up by Carlo Ginori (1702–57) in 1737 at Doccia near Florence.

Labelled as French and belatedly returned to Late Baroque Florence (but to the wrong artist), this magnificent group has finally revealed its identity. It is one of the incunabula of an ambitious young sculptor measuring himself with the sculptors of Ancient Greece and their great Renaissance followers of his native Florence. During the day he copied them in the Galleria degli Uffizi and in the streets of the city. At night he gathered together with other pupils of Foggini in the Borgo Pinti studio to study together. The prominent career to which Della Valle obviously aspired prompted his move to Rome. Della Valle helped us interpret the bronze correctly, interpret correctly its attribution in the Doccia models’ inventory and by extension understand better that document itself. But most important, our understanding of Florentine Late Baroque sculpture and of Della Valle’s art has acquired another firm point of reference.