INCENSE BURNER IN THE FORM OF AN ACROBAT

This exuberant bronze acrobat was most likely used as an incense burner in Renaissance Italy. Masquerading as a contortionist with his legs wrapped around his head, the acrobat would have served as both a utilitarian object and a item of beauty worthy of a humanist's collection. There are holes in the eyes, mouth and bottom from which smoke would have emerged as if the acrobat were performing an amusing party trick.

This cast closely relates to a better known version of the model in which the acrobat acts as an oil lamp rather than an incense burner. This version is known in around twenty casts, which were either made to rest on a base, like the present example, or designed to be suspended from a bronze loop. An example of the latter was recorded in the 1584 inventory of Duke Alfonso II d’Este and the former in the 1652 treatise De lucernis antiquorum (On the Oil Lamps of the Ancients, no. LXXV) by the great Italian scientist Fortunio Liceti (1577-1657). Examples of the oil lamp have in the past been attributed to the great Paduan sculptor Andrea Riccio (1470-1532) by Bode, Planiscig and, more recently, Bliss, although this has been disputed and the model was not included in the recent exhibition on the artist.