Circle of Johann Spörer (1720–1759)

New York, Carlton Hobbs LLC, Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, Scultura IV, 2019

Scultura IV, exh. cat. Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, London, 2019, no. 11

This rare limewood reduction of the famous Borghese Gladiator was almost certainly carved by a sculptor from Germany, where by the late eighteenth century a tradition of wood sculpture of this type had been established. Sculptures in fruitwood were highly prized by artists and collectors for their warm brown, patinated surface, and often appealed to the same collectors who prized bronze statuettes. 

A sculptor known to have produced similar works after the antique is Johann Spörer, who left his native southern Germany to study and settle in Rome in 1739. A set of twelve boxwood models after the antique by Spörer, including the Laocoon and the Farnese Hercules, appears in the inventory of the famous collector Domenico Martelli (1672-1753) and is housed today in the Museo di Palazzo Martelli in Florence. A pair of fruitwood versions of the Furietti Centaurs signed by Spörer were sold at Sotheby's London on 9 July 2008 (lot 100).