Probably from a model by Antonio Lombardo (c. 1458-1516) North Italian, Early 16th century

The present bronze bust is related to a series of diminutive ideal female bronze busts, including variants in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, the Wallace Collection, London, and the Galleria Estense, Modena. Dressed all'antica and produced in Venice around 1500,¹ the series is linked to another group of five small bronze busts of Saint John the Baptist (one of which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no 68.141.10), all of which have been variously attributed to North Italian sculptors.² The prevailing consensus is that the models were most probably created by the Venetian sculptor Antonio Lombardo (c. 1458-1516).

It is difficult to judge who cast the bronzes but some scholars have suggested the Paduan workshop of Severo da Ravenna (1465/75- before 1538). Jeremy Warren, in his detailed discussion of the female bronze head in the Wallace Collection, endorses this proposal, noting that because of Severo’s association with the Lombardo family (he trained with Pietro Lombardo) and due to technical qualities that are analogous to bronzes from Severo’s, the casts likely come from his studio.

While this bust has similar well-articulated waves of hair, parted in the middle and gathered neatly in a bun at the back of her head as well as an analogous expression of “dreamlike melancholy” ,Warren proposes that the popularity of these small bust extended well beyond Italy and he proposes that the present bust could be a Northern cast from the period.³

These intimate sculptures likely represented ideals of beauty rather than actual portraits and the female busts seem to have been intended for display in the studioli of educated private collectors. 

¹ J. Warren, The Wallace Collection: Catalog of Italian Sculpture, London, 2016, vol.1, pp. 219-222, no. 53

² Denise Allen (ed.), Italian Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022, no.53, pp. 180-183

³ Warren 2016, note 48 (this bronze)

RELATED LITERATURE

M. Leithe-Jasper, Renaissance Master Bronzes from the Collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Los Angeles and Chicago, 1986, pp. 138-139, no. 30;

V. Avery, 'The Production, Display and Reception of Bronze Heads and Busts in Renaissance Venice and Padua: Surrogate Antiques', in J. Kohl and R. Müller (eds.), Kopf/Bild: Die Büste in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, Munich and Berlin, 2007, pp. 75-112;

J. Warren, Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture: A Catalogue of the Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2014, pp. 159-163;

A. Markham Schulz, ‘Simone Bianco, the Grimani Collection of Antiquities and Other Unexpected findings’, in Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Museums Wien, vol. 17/18, 2015/2016, pp. 27-43