Attributed to Giacomo Zoffoli (1731-1785) and Giovanni Zoffoli (circa 1745-1805)

Its head held up high and prancing with its left leg forward, yet maintaining perfect balance, the panther advances, silent and proud, its every muscle beautifully rendered by the casting of the bronze. Throughout the 18th century Giacomo Zoffoli led one of the most prominent bronze foundries in Rome, specialising in models after the antique and Old Masters for the Grand Tour audience. The present work - listed in Zoffoli's workshop catalogue as "Notomia di tigre" (Haskell and Penny, op. cit.) - was inspired by a famous composition ascribed to Willem van Tetrode, the artist credited with introducing the tradition of Italian Renaissance bronzes to the Netherlands. Indeed, over the course of almost twenty years in Italy, Tetrode worked with the most prominent sculptors of the age, including Benvenuto Cellini in Florence, and Guglielmo della Porta in Rome. By 1568 he had returned to his native Netherlands, to Delft, but soon left again for Cologne, where his work is recorded by 1574. He died in Germany in 1580. By the 18th century, the Panther was a well-known and admired model, as its appearance in Zoffoli's catalogue of works offered to Grand Tour visitors to Rome testifies.

Another cast of the model attributed to Giovanni Zoffoli, with a variation in the tail arrangement, was sold at Christie's on 6 July 2012, lot 19 (ex Weininger collection).

RELATED LITERATURE

F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique - The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven and London, 1981, p. 342