WORKSHOP OF SEVERO CALZETTA DA RAVENNA (ACTIVE 1496-1543) ITALIAN, PADUA, 16TH CENTURY | Kneeling Satyr mounted as an Inkwell

Probably Robert Valentine Berkeley (1853-1940) and Rose Berkeley (1861-1922)

‘Spetchley Park -I. Worcestershire, The Seat of Mr. R. V. Berkeley', Country Life, 8 July 1916, p. 47. illustrated in the Staircase Hall;

Inventory, 1949, 'A Bronze figure of a kneeling Satyr on triangular base, 10 ½“ high by Andrea Riccio, 1470-1532 [sic]' in the Strong Room

City of Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Birmingham, Commemorative Exhibition of the Art Treasures of the Midlands, 1934, no. 390 (lent by R.G. Berkeley, Esq.).

Since Planiscig's identification in 1935 of the signature O.SEVERI.RA on a bronze sea-monster with the sculptor Severo da Ravenna, a coherent corpus of bronze statuettes has been attributed to this contemporary of Andrea Riccio. Fifty years later a bronze of a kneeling satyr with the initials SE was convincingly identified as a second autograph model by Severo (Christie's, 8 July 1981, lot 341). The model, which exists in numerous variants, had previously been attributed to Riccio by Planiscig (op. cit.). 

Related Literature 

L. Planiscig, Andrea Riccio, Vienna, 1927, pp. 330-331, figs. 380 and 381; C. Avery and A. Radcliffe, 'Severo Calzetta da Ravenna: New Discoveries' in J. Rasmussen, Studien zum europäischen Kunsthandwerk: Festschrift Yvonne Hackenbroch, Munich, 1983, pp. 107-122, figs. 5-12