Allegory of Envy

Enrico Merengo (1638/39 - 1723) and workshop
17th century, White marble

In this sculpture the personification of the Envy is depicted in the guise of an old woman with wrinkled skin and withered breasts, whose hair is made of snakes, according to an iconography in vogue in the 17th century in which she was often depicted as an old witch. German sculptor Heinrich Meyring (or Heinrich Meiering), naturalized Italian by the name of Enrico Merengo, trained in his father's workshop and, after move to Venice in the early 1770s, he is stylistically close to the work of Flemish sculptor Giusto Le Court.