Crucifix
maker
Francesco Terilli
(active Feltre, 1610 - 1633)
Dateabout 1600
Place MadeVenice, Veneto, Italy, Europe
MediumIvory on a wood cross and base
Dimensions83 cm (32 11/16 in.)
ClassificationsCeremonial Objects
Credit LineIsabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Accession numberS28s2
eMuseum ID729672
EmbARK ObjectID12774
Original Numbernone, on T28s4 (I&N)
TMS Source ID1835
Last Updated8/9/24
Status
Not on viewWeb CommentaryIvory is an ideal material for small devotional sculptures: its resiliency permits fine detailing while its natural translucency imparts a gleaming aura to objects. Terilli specialized in carving ivory crucifixes: at least eight survive. They date from around 1600 onwards, placing them at the beginning of the Baroque taste for ivory crucifixes, which became especially strong in Flanders and southern Germany in the course of the seventeenth century.
Ralph Curtis found this crucifix in Venice for Mrs. Gardner. She placed it in her boudoir in her Beacon Street house. At Fenway Court it was placed on the altar in the Long Gallery Chapel, in front of the Soissons window.
Source: Eye of the Beholder, edited by Alan Chong et al. (Boston: ISGM and Beacon Press, 2003): 110.
Ralph Curtis found this crucifix in Venice for Mrs. Gardner. She placed it in her boudoir in her Beacon Street house. At Fenway Court it was placed on the altar in the Long Gallery Chapel, in front of the Soissons window.
Source: Eye of the Beholder, edited by Alan Chong et al. (Boston: ISGM and Beacon Press, 2003): 110.
BibliographyNotesAlan Chong and Giovanna De Appolonia. The Art of the Cross: Medieval and Renaissance Piety in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2001), pp. 7, 17 ill., 18 fig. 4, 19, 20, 27 n. 1 and n. 5, 35 fig. 14, 37, 99-102, cat. 16, fig. b. (as Francesco Terilli and dated to about 1600, after the artist's earliest signed work of 1596)
Alan Chong et al. (eds.) Eye of the Beholder: Masterpieces from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 2003), p. 110, ill.
Elizabeth Anne McCauley et al. Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Venice: Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, 2004), pp. 78, 79 fig. 53, 86 n. 156-57.
Adrienne Chaparro, "Remembering Isabella: Her Yearly Memorial Service," Inside the Collection (blog), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 12 April 2022, https://www.gardnermuseum.org/blog/remembering-isabella-her-yearly-memorial-service
Alan Chong et al. (eds.) Eye of the Beholder: Masterpieces from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 2003), p. 110, ill.
Elizabeth Anne McCauley et al. Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Venice: Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, 2004), pp. 78, 79 fig. 53, 86 n. 156-57.
Adrienne Chaparro, "Remembering Isabella: Her Yearly Memorial Service," Inside the Collection (blog), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 12 April 2022, https://www.gardnermuseum.org/blog/remembering-isabella-her-yearly-memorial-service
MarksNotesSigned on back of the perizonium: F.T.
ProvenanceNotesPurchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner through the painter and collector, Ralph W. Curtis (1854-1922), in Venice, for about 400 francs, a price which included a hanging silver lamp, in December 1884.
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