Italian, Padua, mid-16th century

Sotheby's London, 6 December 2016, lot 51

The present model and its three basic variants are considered to be adaptations of models by the foremost Paduan bronze sculptor of his time, Andrea Riccio. Jeremy Warren (op. cit., pp. 304-305) lists 24 surviving versions, divided into in four groups. The present bronze forms part of the smallest of the groupings and provides an enlightening comparison to the closest known versions, which are in the Louvre, Paris (inv. no. OA 2795), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 1982.60.92) and The Wallace Collection, London (inv. no. S 68).

There is general agreement that these 16th-century satyrs derive from Riccio's masterpiece, the bronze Paschal candlestick made for the Basilica di Sant'Antonio in Padua (1507-1516), which includes four crouching bound satyrs. From these figures Riccio himself developed individual satyr statuettes, perhaps the finest of which is the superb seated Drinking Satyr in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. KK 5539; Allen and Motture, op. cit., pp. 158-163, no. 10).

Within the four groups of satyr statuettes that relate to Riccio's models, there are slight variations in the position of the arms or legs and the particular attributes. Warren (op. cit.) gives the most recent and fullest account of the present model. He observes that this fourth group is both the most consistent, but also the furthest from the ultimate models by Riccio. One important observation is that only the Metropolitan Museum cast has the detail of the mouse on the tree stump also seen in the present cast, but in a slightly different position. Warren and others have related many of these seated satyrs to the fine bronze of Pan Listening to Echo in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and therefore suggest a tentative attribution to Desiderio da Firenze and his workshop.

Desiderio da Firenze is a mysterious figure about whom very little is known. He is documented in Padua between 1532 and 1545, and probably inherited Riccio’s workshop and models on the latter’s death in 1532. He appears to have been a founder of uncommon ability and many of the bronzes attributed to him show signs of little if any work to the surfaces after casting.

In 1504, the humanist Pomponius Gauricus published a book on the art of sculpture, which he had written while studying at Padua's famous university. In this treatise he complained that ‘the sculptors today are so taken up with images of satyrs, hydras, chimaeras, in sum monsters which they will never have even seen in any place, that they give the impression that there is nothing else for them to sculpt’ (see Warren, op. cit., p. 300). The quotation gives a wonderful sense of the mania at this time in northern Italy for small bronze sculptures of mythical antique creatures such as tritons, sea monsters and satyrs. Followers of Bacchus, the god of wine, satyrs were depicted as half-man and half-goat, with furry legs and hooves, pointed animal ears and horns. This engaging figure, with its sharp modelling and vibrantly worked surface, evokes the fascinating world of humanist circles in 16th-century Padua.

RELATED LITERATURE

S. Cristanetti et al., Recent Acquisitions made to the Robert H. Smith Collection of Renaissance Bronzes, The Burlington Magazine, 2007, pp. 20-26, no. 58; D. Allen and P. Motture, Andrea Riccio: Renaissance Master of Bronze, New York, 2008, pp. 158-163, no. 10; J. Warren, The Wallace Collection. Catalogue of Italian Sculpture, London, 2016, vol. 1, pp. 300-305, no. 62