After a Model by Giambologna, Italian, Florence, late 16th/early 17th century

With Daniel Katz, Ltd., London, 2000;

From whom acquired by the late collector.

Cast after a terracotta attributed to Giambologna, the present bronze depicts a woman reclining while she writes. She is shown here surrounded by various tools, such as a compass, scissors, a palette knife and a sword. The original version, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (accession number: A.110-1937) differs in size, measuring 20.5 cm high, and slightly in composition, with the woman resting on a smaller base, surrounded by different items, like a globe and a mask. Another bronze cast, also in the Victoria and Albert Museum (accession number: M.682-1910), is similar to the present bronze - like ours, the figure is surrounded by a compass and a sword, and is diminutive in size. However, the Victoria and Albert bronze was fashioned as a lid for an elaborate inkpot.

Another variant of this composition, executed in alabaster and dated to 1569 is given by Avery to Willem van den Broeck, a contemporary to Giambologna who was active in Antwerp.¹ Like the current bronze, van den Broeck took some creative liberties, choosing to break slightly from Giambologna's original conception by adding a snake at the woman's feet. A marble sculpture of the same subject was in the collection of Michael Hall² and two additional variants, also cast in bronze, are known, one of which was formerly in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore and the other in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (accession number: 1151). All of these examples are attributed to followers of Giambologna.

¹C. Avery, Giambologna, Oxford, 1987, p. 48, figs. 50 and 51.

²C. Avery and M. Hall, Giambologna: An Exhibition of Sculpture by the Master and his Followers from the Collection of Michael Hall, Esq., exhibition catalogue, Salander O'Reilly Galleries, New York 1998, cat. no. 9.

RELATED LITERATURE

A. Radcliffe and C. Avery (eds.), Giambologna 1529-1608: Sculptor to the Medici, exh. cat. Arts Council of Great Britain, London and Edinburgh, 1978, pp. 78 and 79, cat. nos. 26, 27 and 28;

E. von Binnebeke, Bronze Sculpture: Sculpture from 1500-1800 in the Collection of the Boymans-van-Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam 1994, pp. 82-83, cat. no. 18.