A NORTH ITALIAN BRONZE BUST OF A YOUNG MAN IN ARMOUR
PROBABLY LATE 17TH/ EARLY 18TH CENTURY
£2,268
Auction: 15 JANUARY 2025 FROM 10:00 GMT
Description
dark reddish brown/black patina, incised MPI and cast 1701 to the interior, on a turned walnut socle
Dimensions
Bust 13.4cm high; 18.5cm high overall
Footnote
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE:
L. Planiscig, Venezianische Bildhauer der Renaissance, Vienna, 1921, pp. 570-571, figs, 627 and 629.
J. Warren, Medieval and Renasissance Sculpture - A Catalogue of the Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Oxford, 2014, p. 258, fig. 121.
New York, Salander O'Reilly Galleries, Giambologna: An Exhibition of Sculpture by the Master and His Followers from The Collection of Michael Hall, Esq., 6 March - 4 April 1998, C. Avery ed., pp. 158-9, no. 57 (as Hubert Gerhard).
M. Schwartz, ed., European Sculpture from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, New York, 2008, pp. 64-65, no. 26.
Note: Examples of this bronze bust have been variously attributed to Hubert Gerhard, Ferdinando Tacca and more generically to the north Italian school of the mid-16th century (see New York, Schwartz and Warren, locs. cit., respectively). Close comparisons may also be made to signed works by the Venetian artist Tiziano Aspetti, whose signed bronze of St Anthony in the Santo, Padua, has similar facial features. The soldier to the left of Aspetti's bronze relief of the Martyrdom of St Daniel also displays the same facial type, curling hair and breastplate centred by a grotesque mask seen on the bust offered here (for both works see Planiscig, loc. cit.). For a comparable example see Christies New York, The Abbot Guggenheim collection, 28 January 2015, lot 41.