MARTINO REGIO DA VIGANELLO E LE MATERIE DELLA SCULTURA

This elusive sculptor from Lugano, Martino di Simone Regio da Viganello, is documented as working between 1608 and 1644. He comes over both as an ingenious shooting star in the world of sculpture while at the same time displaying his limited talents in working marble. The paper hopes to go deeper into the prickly problem of Martino the modeller and metal smith. Particular attention is focused on a dynamic ter¬racotta group, the Flagellation, for the Sacro Monte di Varese, and the bronze figures he cast in Genoa for Giovan Francesco Bùgnole Sale. The latter represent Mercury and Cupid and Hercules and Cacus. The lost clay model for Mercury may correspond to the bronze figure of the same name by Francesco Fanelli (Fanelli had collaborated with Martino in the Church of Santa Maria delle Vigne). If this is the case it's possible that the bronze Hercules and Cacus now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is also his. Stylistically it is very similar to a signed marble group entitled Hercules and the Hydra by Aran-juez, as it is to the Flagellation.