Italian, Rome, circa 1800, After the Antique

E. Tarizzo and A. Popa, The Sculpture Museum, cat. Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, London, 2020, no. 7

Copying two of the most celebrated marbles from antiquity, this elegant pair of bronzes was probably made in Rome for a Grand Tour clientele. First recorded at the Villa Medici in Rome in 1704, the Roman marble of the young Apollo resting on a tree trunk, called Apollino, achieved immediate fame. In 1771 it was moved to the illustrious Tribuna of the Uffizi in Florence, where it remains on display. While neoclassical versions of the Apollino have frequently been paired with the Venus de' Medici, the present bronze has as its pendant a reduction of the Callipygian Venus ('Venus of the beautiful buttocks'), a Roman marble now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. Dated to the 1st or 2nd century BC, the Callipygian Venus was long housed in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, before being restored by Carlo Albacini and transferred to Naples at the close of the 18th century.

RELATED LITERATURE
F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven and London, 1981, pp. 146-148 and 316-318