This attractive model which, in terms of style and manufacture is of North Italian Renaissance origin, was once attributed to Maffeo Olivieri. This attribution was based on comparisons with a pair of candlesticks presented to the Basilica of San Marco, Venice in 1527, which display similarly contorted figures in niches.
Weihrauch noted that the composition of the statuette is more closely related to an engraving by Gian Giacomo Caraglio of Thetis Running dating from after his arrival in Venice in 1526/27, and derived from a drawing by Rosso Fiorentino, who was also in Venice as the guest of Pietro Aretino in 1530, In it, the marine goddess holds an upturned urn pouring water as she flees from her suitors Neptune and Jupiter.
Subsequently, scholars have settled on a firm attribution to the workshop of Severo Calzetta from Ravenna, who was active from 1496 to 1525 in Padua, producing figures and artefacts in bronze for humanist patrons. The workshop evidently continued to flourish well into the century, serially producing a number of Severo's favourite designs, of which this is one.