The fifteenth century saw an explosion in the development of Italian portraiture both in painting and in sculpture, in part due to renewed interest in antiquity as well as a class of burgeoning collectors of antique and Renaissance portrait medals, many of whom also wanted to record their own features for posterity. Portraits were used to celebrate important occasions (like marriages), and to illustrate one’s status, individual accomplishments, or devout character. Some portraits were idealized images of individuals who requested a more attractive representation of themselves or images of the sitter as a hero or heroine, often drawn from antique Roman portraiture. Different regions in Italy developed standard types of portraits, truncated in various ways, and shown in full profile or in three-quarter view.

The present, beautifully carved relief depicts a young man in elegant parade armour emblazoned with a gorgon on the breast-plate. Although the sitter is not wearing a helmet, this relief evokes Verrocchio’s famous marble profile portrait of Alexander the Great in full armour in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (acc. no. 1956.2.1) (fig. 1) as well as the marble portrait of the Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus, circa 1485-90, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (fig. 2).

Francesco Caglioti has suggested that the present relief could have been carved by someone close to the 15th century Florentine sculptor Gregorio di Lorenzo who was trained in the workshop of Desiderio da Settignano, who produced some of the finest marble portrait reliefs in Italy at that time. While the carving on the present lot is accomplished, particularly in the carving of the hair, the abbreviated truncation, the style of the armour and the proportion of the very narrow shoulders in relation to the head seem to be inconsistent with other 15th century examples. Sculptors often took artistic license when designing armour or dress and, in this case, the armour is decorative and more summary. Shell-shaped scrolls on the shoulder-pieces (the ‘cops’) do appear on some Renaissance armour, but in this relief it appears to be a derivative of the scroll on the helmet of Verrocchio’s relief in Washington or it derives from the same motif on any number of reliefs of armoured gentlemen from the period.

Because portrait reliefs became popular again in the 19th century, numerous 19th century reproductions exist in both private collections and institutions and the dating of several of these is still being debated by scholars.

A Note about the Provenance

The art dealers Hanns Schaeffer and his wife Kate Born Schaeffer offered the present relief for sale at their galleries on Park Avenue, the present relief with an attribution given as “School of Andrea del Verrocchio.” The art historian David G. Carter, then the head of the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis (and soon to become director at R.I.S.D. and later the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts) took note, and advised his younger brother and fellow collector, Richard Carter, to purchase the piece.

The provenance itself was enticing to him. The first owner we are aware of was M. Edmond Bonnaffé, an editor and scholar who produced works including Les Collectionneurs de l'Ancienne Rome, Inventaire des Meubles de Catherine de Médicis en 1589 and Recherches Sur Les Collections Des Richelieu. This relief was included in a sale of part of his collection in 1897 in Paris. The relief was purchased by William Newall and sold in his estate auction in London in 1922, where the attribution to Verrocchio was removed. Newell lived in a small town 20 miles outside of London which became a destination for art historians. His connoisseurship was greatly admired and several articles in the Art Journal by A.B. Skinner in 1905 touted Newall’s collection as one of the finest in England. It is likely that Munich-based Paul Drey Gallery purchased the relief at the Newall auction and several years later it was acquired by Julius Böhler, also from Munich.

It appears that the family of Otto H. Kahn (1867-1934) then purchased the relief. Like Newall, Kahn was a renown collector of Renaissance and later sculpture. He was also a senior partner at the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb and Co., and the second richest man in America behind John D. Rockefeller.