Putto Sitting on a Shell Giacomo Piazzetta (workshop of)

The winged cherub, sitting on a shell, raising a richly pleated drapery over its head, once had a practical function: it wasthe Caryatid figure of an ornate console table. There aretwo standing statues of angels balancing a table above their heads in Hungarian private art collections, which oncebelonged to the same ensemble. The creator of the sculpture was first sought in an Alpine circle of artists because of the material of the piece, the yellow pine. However, its style is more linked to Venetian sculptors, the circle of Giacomo Battista Piazzetta. By analogy, the wooden altar statues of the Rosario chapel in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo (Caryatids depicting male figures, 1683), or the marble angel of the altar of Saint Romuald (1699) in San Michele in Isola can be mentioned.