'Lost Italian masterpiece' discovered at salvage yard

A "lost masterpiece" created by an Italian sculptor responsible for Rome's Trevi fountain has been discovered in a reclamation yard selling for just £300.

The 68cm (27in) tall maquette of Pope Clement XII by Pietro Bracci was spotted by a collector at a salvage yard in Wiltshire.

Stained, marked and covered in lichen, the "lost masterpiece" is thought to have been languishing in a garden in Andover, Hampshire, for decades, auctioneer Mark Yuan-Richards said.

Due to go under the hammer next week, Yuan-Richards, from auctioneers Woolley and Wallis, said: "Things like this never come up on the open market. The last time one did, it made £170,000 but who knows what this will make."

Bracci, best known for the monumental figures at the centre of the Trevi Fountain, was one of the leading sculptors of 18th Century Rome.

He sculpted the "remarkable" maquette nearly 300 years ago, as a preliminary model for a full-size bronze which once graced the Great Hall of the Palazzo Nuovo on the Capitoline in Rome, Yuan-Richards added.

But in 1798 the monumental bronze was melted down and lost, and until the maquette was discovered the only surviving image of it was in an engraving.

Yuan-Richards said the maquette is not only an "extraordinary survivor" but its discovery is "exceptionally exciting".

"It's an incredibly rare thing," he said.

"It really deserves to be in a museum."

He said the reclamation yard had acquired the statue from a manor house in Andover, where it had been in the garden for "quite a long time, potentially decades".

"It should be a lovely white marble, but it looks like concrete," he said.

"I don't think whoever owned it had rated it as a lost masterpiece."

Despite its "weathered" appearance, an "eagle-eyed" collector spotted it and it is now going under the hammer at the Salisbury-based auctioneers.

"[The seller] wants to remain anonymous but it was a great find by him," said Yuan-Richards.

"But how it ended up in England - if only these things could tell us their stories."

The lot is estimated to fetch between £5,000 and £10,000 when it comes up for auction on the 8 October.

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