Bianca Maria Visconti

The work is one of a group of three statues.
See also Inv. S 3

The two statues in Carrara marble are probably the only known full-figure sculpted portraits of the Duke of Milan Francesco Sforza and his wife Bianca Maria Visconti.

They were ordered from the Carrara sculptor Alberto Maffioli as decorative elements for the façade of Cremona Cathedral, on which radical restoration work was done around the end of the fifteenth century, carried out by Maffioli himself and some of his collaborators.

There was a heated dispute concerning the positioning of the two statues: Ludovico il Moro wanted them placed in two cavities in the façade standing about six metres above the ground; Maffioli instead, while accepting such a position for the statue of Bianca Maria, had thought of placing the effigy of the duke in a niche in the portico on the front of the façade, as he had designed it to be viewed at a closer distance. In the light of this dispute, from which the sculptor came out the loser, the different level of completion of the two works can be explained: the image of Francesco Sforza appears to be finished even in the slightest details, while that of Bianca Maria “presents an incoherent unfinished state, as though it had been perfunctorily smoothed to uniform the surface leaving expanses of stone still to be modelled” (Zani).

The duke’s statue, which probably held a weapon that has been lost, is proposed “as the maximum example of faithfulness to Bramante’s concept of the figure. The derivation from the Armed men in the Panigarola house in Milan [...] is so profound, meditated and shared that the statue of Sforza almost appears to be a three-dimensional materialisation of those figures frescoed by Bramante” (Zani).

The group of sculptures, transported to Venice shortly after Cremona was conquered by the Venetians in 1499, was placed in the Doge’s Palace; it later became part of the collection of Count Girolamo Egidio Di Velo in Vicenza and from this of to the Museum.