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拍品专文
These two reliefs probably originally formed part of a decorative interior scheme and seem to relate to the transience of life. Certainly the one relief is full of vanitas symbols - the skull, the bubbles and the rose - all of which point to the fragility of this existence. The iconography of the second relief is more obscure. It has classical allusions to the story of Hercules and the Serpents and is a visual quote of the famous central figure of the antique Laocoon group of the Vatican Museum. However it is clearly neither of these and may simply be intended to emphasise the vulnerability of man.
Although clearly emanating from the hand of an accomplished master, it has not been possible thus far to make a definite attribution for these marbles. The iconography of the relief with the skull appears to take as its inspiration an engraving by Hendrik Goltzius, which includes all the same elements seen here in a roughly similar disposition (see Strauss, loc. cit.). The source for the putto with the serpent has not been identified and may be an original composition created as a pendant to the first relief.
Stylistically, the reliefs are ultimately derived from the work of the sculptor François Duquesnoy (1597-1643), a Flemish sculptor who travelled to Rome and studied antiquities there. His series of drawings and reliefs of putti were enormously influential and copies were used in art schools across Europe into the 19th century. These putti are characterised by their fleshy proportions, chubby cheeks and seemingly 'windswept' hair.
The two putti here follow in that general tradition, but do not appear to come from Duquesnoy's hand itself. The putto with the serpent in particular has a face which is quite distinct from the usual Duquesnoy type and, in fact, relates closely to a bust of a crying putto which is known in both bronze and marble. One example in bronze was included in an exhibition which was held in Toronto in 1975 (op. cit.), where it was catalogued by Charles Avery as 'Flemish, circa 1700'. However, in the entry, he discusses the similarities of the bust to the work of sculptors such as Artus Quellinus the Elder and Rombout Verhulst, both Flemish sculptors working in the second half of the 17th century.
Although clearly emanating from the hand of an accomplished master, it has not been possible thus far to make a definite attribution for these marbles. The iconography of the relief with the skull appears to take as its inspiration an engraving by Hendrik Goltzius, which includes all the same elements seen here in a roughly similar disposition (see Strauss, loc. cit.). The source for the putto with the serpent has not been identified and may be an original composition created as a pendant to the first relief.
Stylistically, the reliefs are ultimately derived from the work of the sculptor François Duquesnoy (1597-1643), a Flemish sculptor who travelled to Rome and studied antiquities there. His series of drawings and reliefs of putti were enormously influential and copies were used in art schools across Europe into the 19th century. These putti are characterised by their fleshy proportions, chubby cheeks and seemingly 'windswept' hair.
The two putti here follow in that general tradition, but do not appear to come from Duquesnoy's hand itself. The putto with the serpent in particular has a face which is quite distinct from the usual Duquesnoy type and, in fact, relates closely to a bust of a crying putto which is known in both bronze and marble. One example in bronze was included in an exhibition which was held in Toronto in 1975 (op. cit.), where it was catalogued by Charles Avery as 'Flemish, circa 1700'. However, in the entry, he discusses the similarities of the bust to the work of sculptors such as Artus Quellinus the Elder and Rombout Verhulst, both Flemish sculptors working in the second half of the 17th century.