Duquesnoy's “Nano di Créqui” and Two Busts by Francesco Mochi

Abstract

The chief purpose of this essay is to present three portrait busts, one by Francois Duquesnoy (1597–1643) and two by Francesco Mochi (1580–1654). One of those by Mochi is here published for the first time; the other two have been published before, with attributions to Bernini. The busts are historically valuable in part because very few documented portraits by these artists are known: five in the case of Duquesnoy, four in that of Mochi, including those we are adding now. Moreover, purely as a matter of chance, the three works, all of which are accurately datable, fall within a limited and historically critical span of time, the fourth decade of the seventeenth century. It was then that the notion of the portrait as a depiction of a significant physical and psychological “moment” emerged, and Bernini developed his famous “speaking” likenesses. These are often regarded as the crowning achievement of the period in portraiture. We shall see that the busts presented here deal with essentially the same notion of portraiture, and offer different yet no less valid interpretations. Hence they not only shed much needed new light on the contributions of Duquesnoy and Mochi in this domain, but they may also help to create a more balanced understanding of the period as a whole.