Nascosti in piena vista: busti barocchi di Jacopo Antonio Ponzanelli a Pontinvrea.

Between the first decade of the 1600s and the early eighteenth century, the small town of Pontinvrea was a feudal property of the Invrea family, which formed part of the Genoese aristocracy and provided the Republic with four Doges. While the palazzo of the marquesses has been stripped of all its painted furnishings, three busts relating to Invrea commissions have survived in the town’s two churches, two of which are of extraordinary quality in spite of having remained unknown to scholars until now. Through a reconstruction of relationships with contemporary artistic and cultural contexts, an updated review of archival and documentary sources and rigorous stylistic comparison, the busts of Antoniotto and Francesco Invrea seniore are here ascribed to the sculptor Jacopo Antonio Ponzanelli (1654-1735), the finest pupil of Filippo Parodi, thus once again highlighting the central role of the Genoese school in the art of Baroque marble sculpture.