Italian, 18th century

The present bronze is cast after the gigantic antique marble sculpture of the Farnese Hercules, signed by Glycon and now in the Museo Nazionale, Naples. The marble was first recorded in Rome in 1556, when it was displayed in the courtyard of the Palazzo Farnese. The Farnese Hercules became highly admired as one of the finest statues ever made and was thus often copied in various media and sizes since its rediscovery. Bronze reductions of the marble became a a prized possession for the Grand Tourist in 18th-century Italy and were produced by well-known artists including Zoffoli and Righetti.

Karsten Schubert (1961-2019)

Karsten Schubert was an influential Anglo-German art dealer who played a leading role in promoting the Young British Artists (YBAs) in the 1980s and 1990s. Schubert exhibited the likes of Rachel Whiteread, Alison Wilding, Gary Hume, Michael Landy and Ian Davenport, as well as then more internationally well-known artists such as Gerhard Richter and Bridget Riley. Later in life Schubert founded Ridinghorse a high-end art historical publisher, named after an art space he had opened in 1995 with Charles Asprey and Thomas Dane.

In Schubert’s obituary in The Guardian, Charles Darwent noted that, ‘For all his love of Britain and English tailoring – he became a British citizen not long before his death – he had a depth of culture and historical understanding that remained admirably German…. When he wrote his own history of museology, The Curator’s Egg (2000), it was with the easy assurance of one who could quote Marcus Aurelius from memory’.

Karsten Schubert was a member of the Faculty of the Fine Arts of the British School at Rome, and sat on the Advisory Board of Drawing Room London. His personal art collection including drawings by Cezanne and Mondrian, as well as ancient sculpture. Schubert’s interest in Grand Tour bronzes cast after antique models reflects both his erudition and his rich intellectual heritage.

RELATED LITERATURE

N. Penny, Haskell, Taste and the antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven and London, 1981, p. 229-232, no. 46; A. Wilton and I. Bignamini, Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century, exh. cat. Tate Gallery, London, 1996, p.280, no. 235