Lost Bracci Marble for Pope Clement XII Found in Salvage Yard

A roughly two-foot marble by Late Baroque sculptor Pietro Bracci, bought for £300 ($395) at a reclamation yard in Wiltshire, is expected to sell for between £5,000 and £10,000 ($6,600–$13,200) at auction on October 8.

Research by a specialist at the U.K. auction house Woolley & Wallis identified the marble as the only surviving maquette for Bracci's 1736 bronze statue of Pope Clement XII. The life-sized bronze once stood in the Great Hall of the Palazzo Nuovo, one of the Capitoline Museums that Clement (1652–1740) opened to the public in 1736. French forces melted the statue down during the brief, French-imposed Roman Republic of 1798–1799.

Until this discovery, the only known representation of the completed work was an engraving by the 18th-century artist brothers Stefano and Rocco Pozzi.

Bracci was born in Rome in 1700 and trained under the Roman sculptor Camillo Rusconi, himself influenced by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Bracci died in 1773. A successful artist in his day, he is best known for carving the colossal figure of Oceanus at Rome's Trevi Fountain.

The commission for his commemorative portrait of Clement XII celebrated the pontiff's urban renewal projects and his munificence in acquiring antique statues for the Capitoline Museums collection. It followed Bracci's earlier marble portrait of the pope, produced for the city of Ravenna.

"To have a rare eighteenth-century marble figure of Pope Clement XII by Pietro Bracci come to light is a remarkable opportunity," Woolley & Wallis furniture specialist Mark Yuan Richards said in a statement. "Bracci was one of the great sculptors of eighteenth-century Rome, and this extraordinary survivor offers a tangible connection to the world of the papal court and the artistic splendor of the period."

The sculpture will be sold on October 8 as part of Woolley & Wallis's Fine Furniture and Collections auction in Salisbury. For scholars of 18th-century Roman sculpture, the model restores a three-dimensional record of a papal monument previously known only through the Pozzi brothers' engraving.