Lot Essay
Gianfrancesco Susini, flourished 1575-1653
This superb, unpublished bronze group recalls, at first glance, the well-known series of such mythological subjects, consisting of two figures arranged pictorially by the Florentine court sculptor Ferdinando Tacca (Radcliffe, loc. cit.). However, a closer examination of the question makes an attribution to Tacca unlikely, not least because his series already comprises a different treatment of the subject of Venus and Adonis, now in Budapest (Radcliffe, op. cit., p. 19, pl. 6, and note 11). That group was previously ascribed - prophetically as it now appears - to Giovanni Francesco Susini because of the relationship between the male figure and Giambologna's earlier statuette of Mars; it is to Susini that one turns for the authorship of the present version.
There are close analogies to be found with Gianfrancesco's major production, Paris abducting Helen, which is known from two casts signed and dated in successive years, 1626 (discussed in Von Allen Seiten Schön, loc. cit.) and 1627 (formerly Château de Thoiry; sold Ader, Picard, Tajan, Paris, Hôtel George V, 15 April 1989, lot A). Perhaps surprisingly, the analogies are not with the heroine, but with the nude woman lying on the ground below, knocked aside by Paris, and normally described as a servant girl. Her hair is elaborately dressed with plaits, as is that of Venus, while her whole pose, with earnestly upturned face and open mouth, and with one hand raised to detain the male figure stepping over her, is a mirror-image of that of the present goddess.
The somewhat stiff angularity of Adonis's body, as well as his impassive face, are also like those of Paris. In addition, Gianfrancesco's stylistic descent through his uncle Antonio Susini from Giambologna is manifest in the treatment of the drapery as a series of channelled grooves running nearly parallel to each other, or bending sharply. Furthermore, the gathered cuff of Venus's abandoned shift is virtually a Giambologna hallmark, recalling those in several of the older sculptor's models of women such as Architecture (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Sleeping Nymph (Grünes Gewölbe Museum, Dresden) and Bathsheba (J. Paul Getty Museum, California).
Another respect in which the group differs from Ferdinando Tacca's bronzes is in the absence of a naturalistic base, with his characteristic 'worm trails' of swirling, matt-punched lines to impart texture. The bark of the tree-stump here retains the traces of modelling tools in the wax original, and thus contrasts more delicately with the folds of drapery and smooth areas of flesh.
The emergence of this exquisitely finished bronze group adds another major composition to the known oeuvre of original works by Giovanni Francesco Susini, much of whose output otherwise consisted of copies of his uncle's and Giambologna's models, or reductions of classical antiquities.
This superb, unpublished bronze group recalls, at first glance, the well-known series of such mythological subjects, consisting of two figures arranged pictorially by the Florentine court sculptor Ferdinando Tacca (Radcliffe, loc. cit.). However, a closer examination of the question makes an attribution to Tacca unlikely, not least because his series already comprises a different treatment of the subject of Venus and Adonis, now in Budapest (Radcliffe, op. cit., p. 19, pl. 6, and note 11). That group was previously ascribed - prophetically as it now appears - to Giovanni Francesco Susini because of the relationship between the male figure and Giambologna's earlier statuette of Mars; it is to Susini that one turns for the authorship of the present version.
There are close analogies to be found with Gianfrancesco's major production, Paris abducting Helen, which is known from two casts signed and dated in successive years, 1626 (discussed in Von Allen Seiten Schön, loc. cit.) and 1627 (formerly Château de Thoiry; sold Ader, Picard, Tajan, Paris, Hôtel George V, 15 April 1989, lot A). Perhaps surprisingly, the analogies are not with the heroine, but with the nude woman lying on the ground below, knocked aside by Paris, and normally described as a servant girl. Her hair is elaborately dressed with plaits, as is that of Venus, while her whole pose, with earnestly upturned face and open mouth, and with one hand raised to detain the male figure stepping over her, is a mirror-image of that of the present goddess.
The somewhat stiff angularity of Adonis's body, as well as his impassive face, are also like those of Paris. In addition, Gianfrancesco's stylistic descent through his uncle Antonio Susini from Giambologna is manifest in the treatment of the drapery as a series of channelled grooves running nearly parallel to each other, or bending sharply. Furthermore, the gathered cuff of Venus's abandoned shift is virtually a Giambologna hallmark, recalling those in several of the older sculptor's models of women such as Architecture (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Sleeping Nymph (Grünes Gewölbe Museum, Dresden) and Bathsheba (J. Paul Getty Museum, California).
Another respect in which the group differs from Ferdinando Tacca's bronzes is in the absence of a naturalistic base, with his characteristic 'worm trails' of swirling, matt-punched lines to impart texture. The bark of the tree-stump here retains the traces of modelling tools in the wax original, and thus contrasts more delicately with the folds of drapery and smooth areas of flesh.
The emergence of this exquisitely finished bronze group adds another major composition to the known oeuvre of original works by Giovanni Francesco Susini, much of whose output otherwise consisted of copies of his uncle's and Giambologna's models, or reductions of classical antiquities.