Attributed to Benedikt Wurzelbauer (1548-1620) Nuremberg, circa 1600

George Durlacher
Frank Partridge & Sons Ltd., 1939

The present bronze can be closely compared to another of the same subject in the Huntington Art Gallery, California, illustrated by Weihrauch (fig. 399). The sharp nose and billowing beard are reminiscent of the present model, as is the dolphin entwined around Neptune’s leg, whose tail acts as a cache-sexe. The description of the muscular torso as well as the flattened and sharp-edged fingers and toes are also closely comparable. Like the Huntington example, the present plumbed figure formed part of a fountain, most probably in an interior domestic setting. Weihrauch attributed the Huntington Neptune to Benedikt Wurzelbauer (1548-1620). However, more recent research has shown that Wurzelbauer, although he signed some of his works, was a bronze caster rather than a sculptor and the models attributed to him are in fact the work of other artists submitted to him simply to be cast in bronze.  

Such models were often carved in wood before being transposed into bronze. One of Wurzelbauer’s best-known projects is the Fountain of the Virtues in Nuremberg. It has been suggested that the sculptor for the figures on the fountain was Johannes Schünneman. However, Chipps Smith rejects this attribution, writing that rather Wurzelbauer worked with ‘an ever-changing group of sculptors’. Wurzelbauer’s casting is, however, distinctive with its sharply etched surface features such as the frown lines on the present Neptune’s forehead and the chiselling of the hair, and consequently several bronzes, close to the present example, have been attributed to his foundry workshop, even if the original modeller remains anonymous. Another bronze of Neptune attributed to Wurzelbauer was published by Blumka Gallery in 2000. Like the present example the dolphin’s tail functions as a cache-sexe, and the lines on the face and hair are carefully chiselled. A final example of a Neptune figure (sold in these rooms, 13^th December, 1990, lot 119) is in the J. Paul Getty Museum, attributed to Benedikt Wurzelbauer and dated to 1600. 

RELATED LITERATURE
Hans Weihrauch, Europäische Bronzestatuetten 15.-18. Jahrhundert, Brunswick, 1967, figs. 396 and 399, pp. 325-328; Jeffrey Chipps-Smith, German sculpture of the later renaissance, c. 1520-1580, Princeton, 1994, pp.198-244; Blumka Gallery, Collecting Treasures of the Past, New York, 2000, no. 44