Catalogue Roberti Fine Art, TEFAF Maastricht 2026 (1) compressed - Flipbook - Page 69
Few biographical details about Mallerini are known but he is recorded as an architect and painter.
He was particular fascinated by Renaissance sculpture and often produced painted trompe l’œil
paintings after well-known works; confer the canvas based on Andrea della Robbia’s (1435–1525)
Madonna and Child, also in the Museo del Bargello, it should be noted, which was sold at Sotheby’s
in London on 4 July 2024, lot 117. Mallerini did not confine himself to earlier masters: the trompe
l’œil bas-relief of the Madonna and Child with the young Saint John the Baptist, sold at Christie’s,
Paris, 12 November 2015, lot 8, reproduces the relief by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) in the
Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen (fig. 3.). The present work thus belongs to a consistent strand
of Mallerini’s production, in which sculptural authority is reimagined through painterly illusion.
Fig. 3. Prospero Mallerini, Trompe-l’œil with a sculpted bas-relief: The Virgin and Child
with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, after Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844). oil on
canvas, unlined, 99.5 x 74.7 cm. Private collection.
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