Allegory of Sculpture

Very early in his career, Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, considerably influenced by Luca Giordano, absorbed the examples of Magnasco and Sebastiano Ricci and turned his style towards a refined decorative freedom in airily elegant works of pure rococo taste; and through his stays in several European artistic centres London, D�sseldorf, The Hague, Antwerp, Paris, Prague Dresden and Vienna, his work gained a certain popularity. The ‘Allegory of Sculpture’ and the ‘Allegory of Painting’ belong to his last years. They are an interweaving of the lightest of figural rhythms, a coloured web of impalpable, rarified weightlessness, shot through with silvery transparencies which recall the pastels of the artist’s sister-in-law, Rosalba Carriera. Like hers, the paintings of Pellegrini are emblematic of the skin-deep spiritual frivolity of a part of the eighteenth century.