Bust of a gentleman with fur

Lazzaro Casario (1546-1592)
16th century, White marble

The provenance of this bust is unknown. It depicts, not without a certain roughness, a person of advanced age, with a severely emaciated face and hollowed-out eye sockets, almost suggesting that the sculptor was inspired by a funerary mask. Unfortunately, given the current state of scholarship, there are no elements that would identify the sitter, while it seems plausible to imagine that the marble portrait – whose lower portion narrows abruptly – was placed inside the rounded niche of a funerary monument. The work has been attributed to the Bolognese sculptor Lazzaro Casario due to certain similarities with other sculptures of his in the churches of San Francesco and Santa Maria dei Servi in Bologna.