Nessus and Deianira

Due largely to the example of Versailles, copies of ancient or modern ‘classics’ for gardens became one of the great export industries for Italian sculptors during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Artists like Antonio Corradini and Domenico Guidi were in demand from Paris to St Petersburg, purveying works which drew heavily upon the examples of Giambologna and Bernini. They tended to follow set formulas which encompassed the seasons, abductions, and other mythological groups.