At the dawn of the 17th century in Genoa, artists’ guilds defined strict professional boundaries, yet the ‘bancalari’– mainly woodworkers – were also authorized to carve precious materials like ivory and coral. Raffaele Soprani’s Vite (1674) confirms this, mentioning ivory sculptures among the Genoese carvers’ works. The scarcity of documentation and absence of cat- alogued examples – particularly small or medium ivory Christs – make the study of this genre in Genoa largely unexplored. However, stylistic com- parison with documented wooden sculptures allows scholars to identify a coherent group of ivory Christs attributed to Domenico Bissoni and his son Giovanni Battista. Domenico, a Venetian active in Genoa since the late 16th century, and Giovanni Battista, born in Genoa and active until the plague of 1656-1657, shared a refined sculptural language. Influenced by Van Dyck’s naturalistic depictions of the dying Christ and by the ivory crucifixes made by the Bavarian Georg Petel during his brief Genoese stay in the 1620s, the Bissoni family brought exceptional technical sophistication to the delicate art of ivory carving.
D. Sanguineti, Domenico e Giovanni Battista Bissono tra Antoon van Dyck e Georg Petel: crocifissi in legno e in avorio a Genova nel primo Seicento
D. Sanguineti
2025-01-01
Abstract
At the dawn of the 17th century in Genoa, artists’ guilds defined strict professional boundaries, yet the ‘bancalari’– mainly woodworkers – were also authorized to carve precious materials like ivory and coral. Raffaele Soprani’s Vite (1674) confirms this, mentioning ivory sculptures among the Genoese carvers’ works. The scarcity of documentation and absence of cat- alogued examples – particularly small or medium ivory Christs – make the study of this genre in Genoa largely unexplored. However, stylistic com- parison with documented wooden sculptures allows scholars to identify a coherent group of ivory Christs attributed to Domenico Bissoni and his son Giovanni Battista. Domenico, a Venetian active in Genoa since the late 16th century, and Giovanni Battista, born in Genoa and active until the plague of 1656-1657, shared a refined sculptural language. Influenced by Van Dyck’s naturalistic depictions of the dying Christ and by the ivory crucifixes made by the Bavarian Georg Petel during his brief Genoese stay in the 1620s, the Bissoni family brought exceptional technical sophistication to the delicate art of ivory carving.
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