A BRONZE FIGURE OF MORGANTE STANDING AND BLOWING A CORNETTO

Beloved court dwarf of the Medici family, Morgante was portrayed time and again by various famed artists, making him one of the best known characters of sixteenth century Italy. Alongside a front and back painting by Bronzino in the Uffizi and a large-scale sculpture at the entrance of the Boboli Gardens by Valerio Cioli, there exist several small-scale bronzes of Morgante originating from the workshop of Giambologna.

Several variants of this model are known, and Leithe-Jasper and Wengraf characterise the present bronze, formerly the property of lawyer and art collector Hugo Oelze, as a Type Bc (Morgante with cornetto and walking stick, lacking the cornetto). While of slightly smaller size, the quality of this cast and the depiction of Morgante make it closest to another version in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.