A BRONZE MODEL OF A REARING HORSE

Adriaen de Vries was born in the Hague but seems to have spent his most formative years training with the courtly mannerist sculptors Giambologna (with whom he worked in Florence in the early 1580s) and Pompeo Leoni (with whom he worked in Milan between 1586 and 1588). He was later patronised by the Emperor Rudolf II and other influential members of the emperor’s extended circle. Although his early works exhibit a goldsmith-like attention to detail, he would develop an astonishingly modern approach to surface modelling in later life which involved virtually no additional chiselling once the bronze emerged from the mould.

Horses have traditionally been associated with wealth and military power and, like many sculptors of his day, de Vries depicted horses both alone and in the form of equestrian portraits with seated riders. Many of these, such as the bronze of Duke Heinrich Julius von Braunschweig-Lüneberg on horseback (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Brunswick; see Adelmann and Diemer, loc. cit.), display the same strong neck, richly modelled mane and elongated, outstretched forelegs as can be seen on the present lot. Perhaps an even closer comparison can be made with a lone rearing horse, first documented in the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II in the inventory of that collection executed between 1607-1611 (today in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; see Bassett, loc. cit.). It has the same richly modelled mane, translucent patina and extended, arching forelegs as the present lot, suggesting that the author of the latter had direct knowledge of de Vries’s working practices in either Italy or, more likely, central Europe.