What Are These Statues In Cy Twombly’s Library

manfredi gioacchini's photo along the open enfilade doorways of cy twombly's house in gaeta, where the library dominates between two sets of doors. along the left wall are tables and a pedestal with white classical sculptures on them, surrounded by crystals, shells, and other tchotchkes. beyond the library through the farther doors is what looks to be table with hats on it, and another door beyond that. the sculpture closest to the foreground was photographed head-on by tacita dean in 2008, and is the subject of this whole effort. though it is also interesting to look through all the photos gioacchini made for other details.
Manfredi Giaocchini, Cy Twombly Gaeta, c.2009 2020? via

I promise this site is not just a Cy Twombly fanblog, but after greg.org hero Claudio Santambrogio found a previously unknown photo of the artist’s house in Gaeta, I tracked it back to a whole previously unknown set of photos, made by World of Interiors contributor Manfredi Gioacchini in, I think, 2009. [next day update: I remembered this wrong; in a now-deleted tweet Gioacchini announced them as new in November 2020, so almost a decade after Twombly’s death.]

a plaster or white painted terra cotta statue of a male nude figure twisting to hold a tablet while billows of drapery surround him sits on a table in front of a wall of books in cy twombly's living room slash bedroom in gaeta. tacita dean made this photo in 2008 but did not publish it, though poet mary jacobus used it in a presentation, from whence this screengrab was made in 2023, in order to identify the statue.
screenshot from Mary Jacobus’s presentation on her Twombly book, via

What jumps out at me? Well, there are additional views of the (plaster? painted terra cotta?) statue Tacita Dean photographed in Twombly’s library, which I’d wondered about in December 2023. [It’s feeling harder and harder to claim this isn’t a fanblog…]

a dark interior and bright sunny window view in manfredi giaocchini's photo of cy twombly's library in gaeta. in the shadow, two white classical style sculptures stand, the arger one on a pedestal, on the left, and the shorter one, on a tchotchke-filled table, on the right. a dark tabletop in the foreground reflects a little sunlight, but is out of focus
mood lighting in Manfredi Gioacchini’s 2009 photo of Cy Twombly’s library/bedroom, via

Anyway, point is, the statue is one of three. Actually, there are more throughout Gioacchini’s photos of the house, but there are three in this library grouping. At the center, in front of the window, is a larger, dramatically unfinished twisting satyr or something. Maybe it’s leaning on an unfinished stump.

Whether they’re actually a pair, another similarly scaled male figure, with its arm raised, sits on a matching table. The contortion and billowing cloak/drapery make me think they’re connected. From the top photo, the 2023 sculpture in profile shows how deep the drapery goes, too. It would be unusual for this to be on a frieze or in a niche; these may be meant to stand free and be seen in the round. Though here Twombly has arranged them in a triptych, with his view of the bay behind.

[April 2025 update: While world’s going to hell, I went to the National Gallery library, where a quick turn through the photos of Twombly, Tacita Dean, and Sally Mann confirm that the large center statue in the Gaeta trio was the Pan statue Twombly often photographed in Bassano in Teverina. Here is a 1998 photo exhibited at Gagosian Roma in 2021, for example, that shows it in profile through a doorway.]

a color photocopy of a polaroid by cy twombly from 1998 of a plaster statue of pan perched or leaning on a tree stump or rock or something is atop a heavy, dark credenza or chest shaped furniture, lit from behind. the pale arms of a french style fauteuil are next to the cabinet, cropped by the heavy rustic dark wood door which frames the scene of the sculpture in the room behind it. behind the door, that is, not the sculpture. nicola del roscio has been named the copyright holder of all of twombly's photographic oeuvre, including this image, which was exhibited at gagosian in rome in 2021, but which is here used to confirm the identification of the statue, as one the artist later moved to gaeta, and to confirm that if people in twombly world have known of my public plea to identify the various plaster statues in his homes, they dgaf enough to reach out and say oh yeah, that's the pan from bassano or whatever, but that's fine. at this point i'm appreciating the inquiry as much as the answer. keeps me looking.
Cy Twombly, Interior, 1998, Bassano in Teverina, drypoint, ed. 6, shown by the esteemed copyrightholder of the entire oeuvre, Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio, at Gagosian Roma in 2021

Previously, directly related: What Is This Statue in Cy Twombly’s Library?
Manfredi Gioacchini | Cy Twombly Gaeta [manfredigioacchini]
Gioacchini’s new book Grand Tour, published Oct. 2024 by Quodlibet, includes the Gaeta photos [manfredigioacchini]