Firedog (Juno Controlling the Winds) (chenet) (one of a pair) 18th century After a model by Alessandro Algardi Italian According to the prominent biographer of artists Giovanni Pietro Bellori (1613-1696), the Baroque sculptor Alessandro Algardi, active in Rome, modeled a set of four firedogs representing the four elements in the guise of mythological figures. Commissioned for Philip IV, king of Spain, the models were created not long before the artists death, in 1654. Two of the designs, the figures of Jupiter and Juno as fire and air—a symbolism quite appropriate to their use as firedogs—were executed on a reduced scale for the French court, both in silver and in bronze. Firedogs of this exuberant model, which create a sense of movement and are interesting in the round, also found a market among the French aristocracy and are listed in late seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury inventories and sale catalogues. It is generally thought that some of them—varying slightly from Algardis ori