3 January 2025
Lyon & Turnbull
If Bernard Kelly’s collection can be said to have a centre, it is probably the group of predominantly 16th and 17th century Italian and Flemish bronzes, complimented by the fine selection of European and Old Master paintings within the collection.
Here, we take a closer look at superb examples of European Art & Old Masters to be offered in our 15 January auction.
Explore our forthcoming auction. Live on 15 January from the Mall Galleries in London and Online
Elizabeth Hartley (née White) (1750?–1824) was one of the most celebrated actors on the London stage in the 1700s. She was also notorious for the role she played in society scandals including ‘The Vauxhall Affray’. There are no reliable sources for her early roles until she appeared in Edinburgh, on 4 December 1771, as Monimia in Thomas Otway’s The Orphan.
After a season in Edinburgh she moved to Bristol where David Garrick, who had heard of her remarkable beauty, commissioned the actor John Moody to attend a performance and report back to him. Moody described her as having ‘a good figure, with a handsome small face, and very much freckled; her hair red, and her neck and shoulders well-turned.' Northcote described her, in a letter to his brother Samuel, 24 Mar. 1773, as ‘one of the most beautiful women I ever saw, and the finest figure, but [she| has not a good voice’ (Whitley, vol. 2, p. 295).
Hartley worked at the Covent Garden theatre in a numerous roles until 1780, and also appeared at Drury Lane, Liverpool and Stroud. She left the stage at the close of the season of 1779–80 when aged only 30, possibly due to ill health.
Tiziano Aspetti (1565-1607) was the leading sculptor in Venice at the end of the 16th century and an important figure in the Italian ‘High Renaissance’. Other versions of these bronzes attributed to Aspetti exist, as identified by Leo Planiscig and Laura Camins.
Figures of Vulcan and Venus Marina were often used as standing finials on large andirons in Venetian palazzi, and versions that relate to the present pair exist. It is likely though that these statues, with their fine finishing and crisp details, were intended as freestanding, independent sculptures. Here Vulcan is shown as a beardless muscular young man with curly hair wielding his hammer, and bears similarities to other male figures in Aspetti's bronze reliefs of the Martyrdom of Saint Daniel for the Duomo, Padua and now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The figure of Venus Marina is derived from a stone statue by Girolamo Campagna (1549–1625) on the Libreria Marciana, Venice. Here, Venus is shown naked with her right arm across her bare breast, standing beside a dolphin whose tail she holds in her left hand while resting her bent left leg on its back. The pairing of Vulcan and Venus Marina neatly represents the concept of the triumph of Vulcan’s forge in Venus’ city, a celebration of the mastery of bronze manufacture by the sculptors and founders of the city of Venice based in and around La Serenissima during the late 16th century.
Cesare Dandini was an Italian painter, active mainly in his native city of Florence, who made a significant contribution to the Florentine Baroque. His bold colour contrasts and elegant, linear compositions, painted with a certain polish, displayed the Florentine tradition of artists such as Carlo Dolci.
An Allegory of Painting and Poetry (Ut Pictura Poesis) is undoubtedly one of the most elegant and refined allegorical compositions in Dandini's oeuvre, which can be dated between the late 1640s or early 1650s. Here, two allegorical female figures are shown in conversation with one another, their statuesque poses enhanced by the marble-like beauty of their pale skin. With her head turned slightly to the right, Poetry gestures to a putto with her left hand, and rests her right hand on an open book which is placed on an ornate wooden lectern, on which a mask hangs. Her companion, the female figure of Painting, is represented with her paint brushes and a stylus in her hands. The Allegory of Painting and Poetry is an iconographic theme which was highly regarded by the Florentine painters of the seventeenth century in reference to Horace's Ars Poetica and the traditional motto of ut pictura poesis, a Latin phrase meaning ‘as is painting so is poetry’. The idea of ut pictura poesis captures the complementary nature of poetry, or writing, and painting, equating the inspiration of the poet and writer with the imagination of the painter. Both are concerned with the imitation of nature: the painter through visual elements and the poet or writer through words.
This marble figure group, known as the San Ildefonso Group, is a copy of a 1st century AD Roman group excavated sometime at the beginning of the 17th century. It was first documented in 1623 in the Ludovisi Collection, and subsequently appeared in engraved prints in 1638 by F. Perrier, 1683 by G. Audran, 1704 by P. A. Maffei, and in 1767 by J.J. Winckelmann.
Drawing on the tradition of works by Praxiteles, the San Ildefonso Group is a typical work of Late Hellenistic and Roman eclecticism. The attribution of the two models of the group, represented as idealised nude male youths, has been disputed over the centuries but is now accepted as representing the twins Castor and Pollux, or alternatively the Greek mythological figures Orestes and Pylades. From the 17th century onwards, copies were highly prized and could be found in private collections, palaces, gardens, and museums throughout Britain and continental Europe.
A version of this composition exists in the Pinacoteca Nazionale, inv. No. 386, which current scholarship has established to be by the artist from Pinturricchio’s Sienese circle, known from his frescoes in Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome, as the Master of the Capella Bosso della Rovere, and who may possibly be identifiable as the young Pacchiarotto (see Filippo Todini, La Pittura Umbra dal Duecento al Primo Cinquecento, Milan, 1989, Vol. I, p. 111, Vol. II illustrated pl/ 271).
CIRCLE OF MARCUS GHEERAERDT THE YOUNGER (FLEMISH 1561-1635)
CHARLES POERSON (FRENCH 1653-1725)
JEAN-BAPTISTE-HENRI DESHAYS (FRENCH 1729-1765)
ATTRIBUTED TO PIETRO DANDINI
AFTER ANTOINE COYSEVOX | LATE 18TH/ EARLY 19TH CENTURY
FOLLOWER OF DE HONDECOETER
17TH CENTURY FRENCH SCHOOL
A FLORENTINE BRONZE FIGURE GROUP | 17TH CENTURY
