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Religious antiques are a large part of the Italian market because churches, convents and private chapels commissioned work for centuries and later released it. A reliquary, an ex-voto tablet, a processional lantern or a carved angel is not dated by piety or by a convincing layer of candle soot. Reliquaries are read from the seal, the joint of the capsule and the relationship between the relic and the mount. Ex-voto panels are read from the ground, the inscription and the costume, which forgers paint too carefully. Carved angels in wood or stucco from Rome and Naples show tool marks at the back and a fixing that belonged to an altar or a machine, not a hole drilled for a modern screw. Gilding, wings and attributes were replaced as liturgy and taste changed. These articles treat the object as church furniture with a workshop behind it.
6 articles
Collectors date Italian wooden Madonnas by timber, gesso and construction, from Tuscan poplar groups to Neapolitan Baroque figures and Val Gardena limewood.
Dating Italian antique crucifixes by wood, shoulder joints and later paint layers in Tuscan pearwood corpora and Neapolitan Baroque workshops.
Italian Baroque angels in wood and stucco, from Bernini’s Roman circle to Neapolitan giltwood altar figures of the seventeenth century, with dating clues.
How to identify Italian reliquaries by form, wax seals, autentiche and construction, from portable thecae to Baroque ostensori and silver busts.
How to identify Italian ex-voto tablets by wood support, tempera or oil, P.G.R. and V.F.G.A. inscriptions, silver hearts, and sanctuary provenance.
How to identify eighteenth-century Neapolitan nativity scenes by terracotta heads, carved wooden limbs, glass eyes, and original silk costumes.