Chimney Piece

The jambs on either side of the firebox opening are carved with ornate plant festoons, held in place by tassels hanging from corbels in the shape of deeply-carved leaf volutes. Festoons and garlands of leaves and fruit inspired by Classical funerary sculpture became extremely popular in the 15th century both on tombs (Pietro Lombardi’s tomb of Alessandro Roselli in Padua, for instance, or the tomb of Andrea Severoli in the Chapel of St. Terentius in Faenza Cathedral carved by an unknown local sculptor at more or less the same time as this piece) and on chimney pieces such as the one in the Museo Bardini in Florence (inv. no. 240). At either end of the apron we find a symmetrical repetition, carved in low relief, of the Manfredi family device consisting of the instruments used for practising the ancient medical technique of phlebotomy, or bloodletting: the fleam, the twine and a bleeding arm. In the centre of the apron, a garland borne by putti encloses a lamb clasping a column, the symbol of Carlo II Manfredi who ruled Faenza from 1468 to 1477 and commissioned the renovation of the city and the reconstruction of the Palazzo del Popolo, now the town hall. According to a local 17th century writer, Bernardino Azzurrini (1542 – 1620), the many rooms situated on the palazzo’s first floor, or piano nobile, which served as a residence for Manfredi and his court, contained “two chimney pieces carved in raw stone by the hand of Donatello” (Azzurrini, ms. 72-VIII, c. 8r), of which this may be the sole surviving exemplar (Guidotti Magnani 2021). Azzurrini’s generic reference to Donatello was suggested by the motif of two putti, or spiritelli, facing one another in flight, almost as though they were “gliding”. Inspired by Classical sarcophagi, they were introduced into 15th century sculptural practice by the Tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and the Guelph Tabernacle in Orsanmichele in Florence. The motif was commonly adopted in Florence and elsewhere from the mid-15th century until c. 1490, for the decoration of tombs and domestic fixtures and fittings, by the sculpture workshops that specialised in producing stone ornaments for architectural parts, portals, basins and chimney pieces in Florentine homes and churches. With numerous stylistic similarities, the two crest-bearing putti also appear in a chimney piece now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (inv. no. 5896-1859), carved c. 1457 and attributable to the workshop that Desiderio da Settignano (Settignano 1429/31 – Florence, 1462) ran with his brother Geri (1422/24 – 1461/69) in Florence. Evidence to support the contention that the Faenza chimney piece came from Desiderio’s prolific workshop may possibly lie in payments made to the sculptor in 1456 by an art dealer named Bartolomeo Serragli for washbasins and a chimney piece (Gentilini 2007; Gentilini 2011). In addition to Donatello and, subsequently, to Desiderio’s workshop (an attribution accepted by Ferretti 2011, p. 62), the Faenza chimney piece has also been assigned to Francesco di Simone Ferrucci (for the various attributions, see Pellegrini 1994, p. 213, p. 215 n. 33), and to Giuliano da Maiano who is known to have been in Faenza when he was working on the design for the reconstruction of the city’s Cathedral (Pellegrini 1994, p. 213).