Busto di Giovanni Battista Trucchi di Levaldigi

The bust portrays Count Trucchi di Levaldigi, the Minister of Finance and, in 1686, the founder of the parish church of San Giovanni Battista in Lingotto, where this work was originally kept. The bust is char-acterised by the great precision of its details, which were chiselled with extreme care by the Lugano-born sculptor Bernardo Falconi. A dynamic artist-entrepreneur who worked in Veneto, Piedmont and Liguria, he was called to Turin as a “sculpture and caster of artillery”. He made the funeral monument, now lost, of Duke Charles Emmanuel II and his wife Françoise d’Orléans (Francesca di Valois) (1664-1666) for the chapel of the Holy Shroud and several marble and bronze statues for the Reggia di Venaria, which earned him important honours and commissions from the Court of Savoy.