Lost Baroque masterpiece made by Trevi fountain sculptor found languishing in Wiltshire scrapyard
An unassuming two‑foot marble model of Pope Clement XII, spotted by a collector in a Wiltshire scrapyard, has turned out to be a rare maquette by Pietro Bracci. The piece, covered in lichen and marked with age, was bought for £300 and immediately recognised as a missing link to a vanished Baroque monument.
The original work was a monumental bronze statue that once stood in the Great Hall of the Palazzo Nuovo on the Capitoline in Rome. Melted down in 1798, it vanished from the historical record, leaving only an old engraving as evidence of its existence. Bracci’s marble model, identical in scale to the lost bronze, now provides the clearest visual reference for scholars and the public.
Bracci, a leading 18th‑century Roman sculptor best known for the Oceanus figure at the centre of the Trevi Fountain, gains renewed attention as this discovery breathes new life into his oeuvre. The maquette not only illustrates his mastery of Baroque dynamism but also revives a piece of Rome’s artistic heritage that had been thought lost forever.