The Sculpture Museum - Catalog - Page 62
fig. 1
Roman, 1st century bc,
Castor and Pollux, marble
Madrid, Museo del Prado,
inv. no. E000028
hundred folios of correspondence between him and the intermediary Giovanni
Giacomo Zamboni in London. Unfortunately, Zamboni’s replies have been lost at
the Florentine end, though a few of his draft letters from the 1720s do survive in
the Bodleian Library. The correspondence begins on 15 October 1716, just after the
visit to Florence of the twenty-year-old Earl of Burlington, and covers the latter
half of Soldani’s career.
The present composition is drawn from an ancient Roman marble group, of
near life-size proportions, now in the Prado Museum in Madrid (fig. 1). The statue
– probably excavated on the site of the ancient Gardens of Sallust in Rome – was
first recorded in a 1623 inventory of the Ludovisi collection, in whose palace on
the Pincian Hill it resided until it was acquired by Cardinal Camillo Massimi
(1620–1677). Upon Massimi’s death, the painter Carlo Maratta entreated Queen
Christina of Sweden (1626–1689; fig. 2), who had by then settled in Rome after
having abdicated in 1654, to acquire the marble, hoping that the prized antiquity
