25 Inches High x 15 Inches Wide x 12 Inches Deep
Florentine Emilio Zocchi (1835-1913) created this statue depicting Michelangelo sculpting his purportedly first marble sculpture. According to Michelangelo’s biographers Ascanio Condivi and Giorgio Vasari, Michelangelo was studying in the gardens of Lorenzo de Medici, “il Magnifico”, at around the age of fifteen. He was intrigued by an ancient work of a faun’s head, and decided to make a copy of it. He imagined the parts of the face that were missing from the ancient piece, such as the mouth. While he worked, Lorenzo noted that the old faun likely wouldn’t have so many teeth, so Michelangelo changed the appearance of the open mouth. Lorenzo at that point became Michelangelo’s patron. The resulting sculpture can also be found in our collection as Item #31.
Artist: Emilio Zocchi
Museum: Palazzo Pitti, Florence
Time Period: Modern, 1861
1911 Catalog ID # – 2862
Sources:
Barolsky, Paul. “Michelangelo’s Marble Faun Revisited.” Artibus Et Historiae, vol. 20, no. 40, 1999, pp. 113-116. JSTOR, /books?id=-Q7c3dIGsAQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.
“The Young Michelangelo.” Web Gallery of Art, https://www.wga.hu/html_m/z/zocchi_e/michela2.html.