Altar Group

One centre of terracotta sculpture during the High Renaissance was Modena. The highly respected Antonio Begarelli was active there, creating numerous altars with life-size figural groups for Modena and communities in the region. As early as 1842 the Berlin Museums were able to acquire a major work of this type. The four angels from San Salvatore in Modena were combined by the previous owner, who restored a number of Begarelli’s works, with a figure of Christ which proved, when examined in the course of recent restoration, to be a new historicizing plaster piece. What is typical of Begarelli is that his figures are coloured to look like marble and were originally placed against a painted background for maximum contrast. The emotional style of Begarelli’s creations recalls the paintings done at the same time in nearby Parma by Correggio. In the eighteenth century, the four angels in the Berlin altar group were seen together with a large Madonna, which is now in the Galleria Estense in Modena.