ANDREW BUTTERFIELD FINE ARTS AND MORETTI FINE ART PRESENT BODY AND SOUL: MASTERPIECES OF ITALIAN RENAISSANCE AND BAROQUE SCULPTURE

TWELVE RARE WORKS OF ART ON VIEW FOR THE FIRST TIME OCTOBER 21 - NOVEMBER 19, 2010 AT MORETTI FINE ART, 24 EAST 80TH STREET, NEW YORK.

In their first collaborative exhibition, two renowned Renaissance and Baroque fine art specialists, Andrew Butterfield of Andrew Butterfield Fine Arts and Fabrizio Moretti of Moretti Fine Art, will present Body and Soul: Masterpieces of Italian Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture on Thursday, October 21 through Friday, November 19, 2010 at Moretti Fine Art, 24 East 80th Street in New York.

“We are very pleased to present this group of twelve rare masterpieces of Italian sculpture, which are on view for the first time,” said Andrew Butterfield. “We have assembled the best of the best of museum-quality works of art that represent the epitome of Renaissance and Baroque artistry.”

According to Butterfield, sculpture is one area of the market where it is still possible for a collector to assemble a great collection worthy of a top international museum. The works that Butterfield and Moretti have acquired for this exhibition, including sculptures by Riccio (the subject of a recent exhibition at the Frick Collection), Verrocchio (Leonardo da Vinci’s teacher) and Algardi, combine ideality and naturalism of form with intensity and depth of expression. In these works the artists aimed to grasp not only the outer appearance but also the inner life of the figures they represent, hence the exhibition’s title, Body and Soul. The range of emotion depicted is extraordinary, from the peace and serenity of Sansovino’s Charity -- literally an embodiment of divine love -- to the fear and anger of Verrocchio’s Medusa -- a manifestation of Olympian terror.

“It is a great pleasure to collaborate with Andrew Butterfield, one of the preeminent scholars in the field,” said Fabrizio Moretti, who developed a friendship with Butterfield after meeting him at The European Fine Art Fair, in Maastricht, The Netherlands five years ago. “Over the past few years, we have made significant discoveries, which exemplify the genius and beauty of Italian sculpture, and will bring to the forefront twelve very important acquisitions that we believe will appeal to a broad audience of connoisseurs, curators and historians, as well as the general public.” According to Moretti,
each piece was selected for its rarity and historic significance in the trajectory of Renaissance and Baroque sculpture, from the 15th through 18th centuries.

Highlights from the exhibition include:
Madonna, by Andrea Riccio (circa 1510), a life-size sculpture, is the first statue of the artist to be rediscovered in many years, and is the first work by him in terracotta to come on the market since the Thyssen Madonna and Child was acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2002. “This is a sculpture of extraordinary power,” said Butterfield. “It is like a great Bellini Madonna, only in 3-D.”

Charity (circa 1510), a terracotta statue, is a masterpiece by Jacopo Sansovino, who was, after Michelangelo, the leading sculptor of the sixteenth century. No work by the artist has come to light and been acquired by a museum since 1931. Sansovino is celebrated for the Raphaelesque style of his sculpture, and that is especially true of this work, with its exceptionally graceful pose and elegant draperies. Sansovino’s models, according to Vasari, were used by Andrea del Sarto and other Florentine painters. Sarto used this statue as the basis of his painting of Charity in the Chiostro dello Scalzo in Florence and it also influenced his Madonna of the Harpies (now on view in the Uffizi) among other works. Sansovino’s models were among the first to be collected, by patrons as well as by other artists. Only eight survive in the world, and all the others are in museum collections.

Medusa (circa 1480), a terracotta relief, by Andrea del Verrocchio, is the first work by Verrocchio, the teacher of Leonardo, to be discovered in twenty-five years. “In its intensity of expressiveness and its freshness of modeling, it is among the most powerful works of Renaissance sculpture in North America,” said Moretti.

Allegory, Model for the Catafalque of Carlo Barberini (1630), by Alessandro Algardi,
represents Baroque sculpture at its best. Commissioned by Pope Urban VIII and made under the direction of Gianlorenzo Bernini, who was the mastermind of the project, this work served as a model for a statue on the funerary monument of Carlo Barberini, the pope’s brother. According to Butterfield, this is the most important Baroque terracotta to be discovered since Bernini’s modello for the Fountain of the Moor acquired by the Kimbell Museum in 2004.

ABOUT ANDREW BUTTERFIELD
As a dealer, Butterfield has found and sold dozens of major works of art, including important
discoveries of paintings and sculptures by Bernini, Donatello, Ghiberti, Giambologna, Mantegna, Riccio, and Verrocchio. His clients have included many of the top private collectors and museums in the world, such as the Musée du Louvre, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Kimbell Art Museum.
As a scholar, Butterfield has published more than one hundred articles and books, on subjects ranging from Fra Angelico to Picasso. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New Republic and his research has won many prestigious awards, among them The Bernard Berenson Prize, and The Mitchell Prize for Best Book in the Visual Arts.

Butterfield was a student of Sir John Pope-Hennessy at the Institute of Fine Arts, where he received a Ph.D. in 1992. He held senior research positions at the Institute for Advanced Study, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Harvard University and has worked in the art market since 1996. He has taught at the Institute of Fine Arts, and curated or collaborated on many gallery and museum exhibitions. He established Andrew Butterfield Fine Arts, LLC in 2005.

ABOUT FABRIZIO MORETTI
Located in the heart of Florence, between the Strozzi Palace and Santa Maria Novella, Moretti Srl was founded in 1999 by Fabrizio Moretti who, at the young age of 24, rapidly catapulted his gallery to the forefront of gold ground paintings, primarily from Tuscany. Building upon the foundation established by his father, 33-year old Fabrizio continues to expand the gallery’s tradition of presenting important Italian works of art. In 2005, he opened the London-based Moretti Fine Art Ltd., introducing this period to the vast international stage at the heart of London’s art market, New Bond Street. The New York gallery, opened in collaboration with Adam Williams Fine Art, opened in 2007. Among the paintings sold to museums are Maestro del Bigallo, Madonna and Child, (XIII century) sold to the Galleria degli Uffizi, Fra Angelico, Two Domenicans Saints, sold to the Italian State and the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze to be returned to their original home at the Church of San Marco, and Cima da Conegliano, Madonna and Child, sold to the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, in collaboration with Adam Williams.

Moretti Fine Art exhibits at the most prestigious international art fairs including the Biennale
des Antiquaires in Paris, the Biennale dell’Antiquariato di Firenze, and The European Fine Art Fair, for which Mr. Moretti also serves on the executive committee. He also appears on Italian television as an expert on topics relating to the international art market, and has written several articles on the subject.

BODY AND SOUL: MASTERPIECES OF ITALIAN RENAISSANCE AND BAROQUE SCULPTURE, opens at Moretti Fine Art, 24 East 80th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, with a private preview on Wednesday, October 20 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM and a late night on Thursday, October 21, with hours from 10am – 8pm. The exhibition runs through Friday, November 19, 2010. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 AM to 5 PM.

For more information visit www.andrewbutterfield.com and www.morettigallery.com