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Lot Essay
This striding figure of Hercules was clearly modelled to carry a globe, although it is not apparent that the present bronze ever actually held one. It seems, rather, to serve almost as an abstracted study of the heroic male nude. It is perhaps for this reason that the composition has been grouped with a number of bronze écorchés, which depict the human body without skin, exposing the rippling patterns of muscle beneath.
When the present bronze was exhibited in San Francisco (loc. cit.), Camins associated it with Adriaen de Vries (died 1626), a Netherlandish sculptor who had much of his training in Italy but who returned north to work for the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. However, the body type evident in the bronze offered here, with its exaggerated shoulders and chest, as well as its relatively narrow hips, is quite different from the proportions used by de Vries which include a short torso and a more abstract rendering of the muscles. Comparison to an écorché of St Bartholomew attributed to Gabriel Grupello (Dusseldorf, loc. cit.) might show a greater similarity in the body proportions but lacks the classicism of the Abbott Guggenheim example. In 2008, Schwartz attributed the model to the Netherlandish sculptor Tetrode. This is perhaps the most convincing theory because the present figure of Hercules displays the same theatricality of pose seen so often in the oeuvre of Tetrode (see, for example, lot 71). However, the facial type is quite different from the recognisable male faces of Tetrode's bronzes and the depiction of the musculature, although similar, is not compelling. It therefore seems likely that the author of the present composition was a northern artist with knowledge of sculptural practices in Italy, although no consensus has been reached regarding a specific attribution.
When the present bronze was exhibited in San Francisco (loc. cit.), Camins associated it with Adriaen de Vries (died 1626), a Netherlandish sculptor who had much of his training in Italy but who returned north to work for the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. However, the body type evident in the bronze offered here, with its exaggerated shoulders and chest, as well as its relatively narrow hips, is quite different from the proportions used by de Vries which include a short torso and a more abstract rendering of the muscles. Comparison to an écorché of St Bartholomew attributed to Gabriel Grupello (Dusseldorf, loc. cit.) might show a greater similarity in the body proportions but lacks the classicism of the Abbott Guggenheim example. In 2008, Schwartz attributed the model to the Netherlandish sculptor Tetrode. This is perhaps the most convincing theory because the present figure of Hercules displays the same theatricality of pose seen so often in the oeuvre of Tetrode (see, for example, lot 71). However, the facial type is quite different from the recognisable male faces of Tetrode's bronzes and the depiction of the musculature, although similar, is not compelling. It therefore seems likely that the author of the present composition was a northern artist with knowledge of sculptural practices in Italy, although no consensus has been reached regarding a specific attribution.