Attributed to Andrea Briosco, called Riccio (circa 1470-1532) and workshop | Italian, Padua, first third 16th century | Bust of a Young Man

Luigi Grassi (1858-1937), Florence, by 1927;

with G. Schubert, Milan, 1962;

Prof. Michael Jaffe, CBE (1923-1997), Cambridge;

thence by descent;

on loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1999-2013;

Christie's London, 5 July 2013, lot 51;

private collection, Europe

The affinity of this diminutive bust with the work of Andrea Riccio was recognised by Leo Planiscig, who published it in his seminal 1927 monograph on the Paduan bronze sculptor (op. cit.). Depicting a young man wearing a wreath, it may represent the god Bacchus or one of his followers. Its distinctive facial type finds numerous comparisons in Riccio's autograph oeuvre, perhaps most strikingly in the Shepherd with Syrinx in the Louvre (inv. no. OA 6311), which has a near-identical expression, with a furrowed brow (see op. cit., no. 21). At a height of 4.5cm., Riccio's self-portrait bust in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. KK 5516) provides a conceptual parallel for this unusually small bronze. Its flat truncation, upwards gaze and all'antica sentiment place it within the context of a series of slightly larger bronze busts associated with Antonio Lombardo and Severo da Ravenna, which were probably intended for display in a scholar's studiolo.

RELATED LITERATURE

D. Allen and P. Motture, Andrea Riccio: Renaissance Master of Bronze, exh. cat. The Frick Collection, New York, 2008