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Lot Essay
When the present bronze was included in the ground-breaking exhibition on the Florentine sculptor Giambologna in 1978 (Avery and Radcliffe, loc. cit.), it had only recently been sold as part of the contents of Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire. Mentmore, built in the mid-19th century by Baron Mayer de Rothschild, was inherited by Rothschild’s only daughter, Hannah, along with its spectacular art collection and £2,000,000 in cash. The inheritance made her the richest woman in Britain and in 1878 she married Archibald, 5th Earl of Rosebery, a charming and talented Scottish aristocrat who would later be Prime Minister. It was following the death of their son, the 6th Earl, in 1974 that the collection was ultimately sold at public auction.
The subject of the bronze offered here depicts the abduction of Deianira, the wife of Hercules, by the centaur Nessus, as recounted in Book IX of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Hercules and Deianira needed to cross the river Euenos and Nessus offered to ferry Deianira while Hercules swam. However, when Hercules reached the far bank, Nessus attempted to run off with Deianira, only to be shot with an arrow by Hercules for his treachery. The irony was that Nessus ultimately got his revenge: he persuaded Deianira to keep a sample of his blood to use as a love potion. When she later applied it to Hercules’ shirt, it consumed the hero’s skin with a mysterious fire and he threw himself on a funeral pyre. Deianira then took her own life.
The subject was a rare one in art until Giambologna’s masterful creation. Giambologna, a native of Boulogne (from which his Italian name was ultimately derived) travelled to Italy and eventually became court sculptor to the Medici Grand Dukes in Florence. Because his patrons sent the sculptor’s bronzes as diplomatic gifts to courts across Europe, his artistic legacy was profound and enduring.
Giambologna’s celebrity came, not least, because of his compositional brilliance. While his contemporaries were often constricted by tradition and narrative, Giambologna was famously more interested in the way in which his sculptures interacted with space than with the story he was telling. As detailed in the exhibition catalogue noted above, the earliest references to Giambologna’s group of Nessus and Deianira comes from archival sources in the papers of the Salviati family – early patrons of the sculptor. A letter of 30 April 1577 records payment by the family to Giambologna for a bronze centaur, and in an inventory of 1609 which lists the inheritance of Lorenzo Salviati, the bronze is more specifically described as ‘Un centauro di bronzo con una femmina addosso, di mano di Gio. Bologna…’ (‘A bronze centaur with a woman on his back, by the hand of Giambologna…’; quoted in Avery and Radcliffe, op. cit., p. 109).
Today there are known to exist at least three major types of the theme, named as Types A, B and C, with variants within each type. The present bronze corresponds to Type A, where Deianira sits on the back of the centaur. In Type B - thought to be a later evolution of the composition - Deianira attempts to lift herself from the centaur with her foot wedged beneath her. Type C largely follows Type B but is on a larger scale.
As noted above, the present bronze was included in the exhibition devoted to Giambologna (loc. cit.), which re-established the artist as a fundamentally important figure in the artistic world of Florence in the late 16th and very early 17th centuries. In their catalogue entry, Avery and Radcliffe noted the subtle differences to Giambologna’s original composition, including the raised tail and more animated drapery. They suggested that this was typical of the work of Gianfrancesco Susini, the nephew of Giambologna’s most trusted assistant Antonio Susini, who eventually left his master’ workshop to establish an independent foundry. The attribution of the composition has been confirmed by recent scholars. Comparison of the glowing, pale reddish gold lacquer of the surface with documented bronzes by Gianfrancesco in the Liechtenstein collection (Kugel, op. cit., nos. 9-17) further serve to confirm this opinion.
Discussions of art history and provenance aside, as an object the bronze remains a testament to the tradition of innovative and technically high quality bronzes established in Florence, particularly under the aegis of Giambologna. With its heightened sense of drama, its wonderfully chiselled details and its translucent surface, the bronze offered here is a masterpiece of Florentine baroque sculpture.
The subject of the bronze offered here depicts the abduction of Deianira, the wife of Hercules, by the centaur Nessus, as recounted in Book IX of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Hercules and Deianira needed to cross the river Euenos and Nessus offered to ferry Deianira while Hercules swam. However, when Hercules reached the far bank, Nessus attempted to run off with Deianira, only to be shot with an arrow by Hercules for his treachery. The irony was that Nessus ultimately got his revenge: he persuaded Deianira to keep a sample of his blood to use as a love potion. When she later applied it to Hercules’ shirt, it consumed the hero’s skin with a mysterious fire and he threw himself on a funeral pyre. Deianira then took her own life.
The subject was a rare one in art until Giambologna’s masterful creation. Giambologna, a native of Boulogne (from which his Italian name was ultimately derived) travelled to Italy and eventually became court sculptor to the Medici Grand Dukes in Florence. Because his patrons sent the sculptor’s bronzes as diplomatic gifts to courts across Europe, his artistic legacy was profound and enduring.
Giambologna’s celebrity came, not least, because of his compositional brilliance. While his contemporaries were often constricted by tradition and narrative, Giambologna was famously more interested in the way in which his sculptures interacted with space than with the story he was telling. As detailed in the exhibition catalogue noted above, the earliest references to Giambologna’s group of Nessus and Deianira comes from archival sources in the papers of the Salviati family – early patrons of the sculptor. A letter of 30 April 1577 records payment by the family to Giambologna for a bronze centaur, and in an inventory of 1609 which lists the inheritance of Lorenzo Salviati, the bronze is more specifically described as ‘Un centauro di bronzo con una femmina addosso, di mano di Gio. Bologna…’ (‘A bronze centaur with a woman on his back, by the hand of Giambologna…’; quoted in Avery and Radcliffe, op. cit., p. 109).
Today there are known to exist at least three major types of the theme, named as Types A, B and C, with variants within each type. The present bronze corresponds to Type A, where Deianira sits on the back of the centaur. In Type B - thought to be a later evolution of the composition - Deianira attempts to lift herself from the centaur with her foot wedged beneath her. Type C largely follows Type B but is on a larger scale.
As noted above, the present bronze was included in the exhibition devoted to Giambologna (loc. cit.), which re-established the artist as a fundamentally important figure in the artistic world of Florence in the late 16th and very early 17th centuries. In their catalogue entry, Avery and Radcliffe noted the subtle differences to Giambologna’s original composition, including the raised tail and more animated drapery. They suggested that this was typical of the work of Gianfrancesco Susini, the nephew of Giambologna’s most trusted assistant Antonio Susini, who eventually left his master’ workshop to establish an independent foundry. The attribution of the composition has been confirmed by recent scholars. Comparison of the glowing, pale reddish gold lacquer of the surface with documented bronzes by Gianfrancesco in the Liechtenstein collection (Kugel, op. cit., nos. 9-17) further serve to confirm this opinion.
Discussions of art history and provenance aside, as an object the bronze remains a testament to the tradition of innovative and technically high quality bronzes established in Florence, particularly under the aegis of Giambologna. With its heightened sense of drama, its wonderfully chiselled details and its translucent surface, the bronze offered here is a masterpiece of Florentine baroque sculpture.