Attributed to Massimiliano Soldani Benzi

With Daniel Katz ltd, London

The Dancing Faun is one of the most famous antiquities in Florence, where it can be found in the Tribuna of the Uffizi. Although it is first recorded in 1665, in a book by Rubens' son Albert, there is evidence to indicate that the sculpture was in the Grand Ducal collections as early as the 16th century. The head and arms, which likely date to this period, were once said to have been restored by Michelangelo. The ancient sculpture itself is thought to be a 3rd-century copy of a bronze Greek original. The model was copied widely including: by Foggini (Versailles), Soldani (for the Prince of Liechtenstein and the Duke of Marlborough), Zoffoli, Righetti, and in glyptic form by Marchant (cf. Haskell and Penny, op. cit., for all of the above).

In 1695, Soldani-Benzi wrote to prince Liechtenstein - for whom he made both a full-scale bronze version and smaller scale casts - that the ‘Faun is the most beautiful statue to be seen’ (Haskell and Penny, op. cit., p.205). The present beautifully cast example of the model can be tentatively attributed to Soldani on the basis of its finely chased surface with darkened red-brown patina, convincing anatomy and musculature, and well-defined details including the hair and hands, which recall autograph casts by Soldani, such as that in the Quentin collection (Leithe-Jasper and Wengraf, op. cit., no.30). Soldani’s cast in the Art Gallery of Ontario (inv. no. 82/56) shares a similarly smooth surface. A third cast of the Dancing Faun in the Liechtenstein princely collections (inv. no. SK 137), also compares to the present bronze although the Liechtensein example has more prominent golden translucent layers to the patina.

RELATED LITERATURE

M. Leithe-Jasper and P. Wengraf, European Bronzes from the Quentin Collection, exh. cat. The Frick Collection, New York, 2004, pp.268-273, no. 30; F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven and London, 1981, pp. 205-208; A. Kugel, Les Bronzes du Prince De Liechtenstein: Chefs-d’oeuvre de la Renaissance et du Baroque, Paris, 2008, no.26