AFTER GIAMBOLOGNA, NORTH ITALIAN, LATE 17TH OR FIRST HALF 18TH CENTURY, BEFORE 1767

As Douglas Lewis (2016) has discovered and extensively researched, this bronze of Neptune is the fifth of a mid-eighteenth century group of nearly identical casts of this famous design, taking as their point of departure Giambologna’s spectacular bronze model of the next-to-last prototype for the Papal Fountain of the Piazza del Nettuno, in the city center of Bologna. That half-life-size figural model, now preserved in Bologna’s Museo Civico [inv. no. 1503; 78.6 cm (31 inches) high], is contemporaneously documented as being unquestionably from Giambologna’s own hand.
On 20 August, 1563 Giambologna and Portigiani signed Cesi’s contract to provide all the bronzes (eventually totaling nearly 60) for this great civic fountain, whose marble elements Cesi had already contracted on 2 August 1563 from the Palermitan painter/architect Tommaso Laureti (c. 1530-1602). This precocious commission—and especially its stunning centerpiece, the colossal bronze figure of Neptune—was to become not only the first monumental achievement of Giambologna’s entire career, but also one of the most significant milestones in the long sequence of European fountain design, and indeed in the whole history of Mannerist sculpture.
The first of the four other examples is a version originally in Joseph Smith’s collection. Smith, the English Vice Consul of Venice from 1744-60, was an important collector and the catalogue of his cabinet of gems, Dactyliotheca Smithiana, was published by Giambattista Pasquale, Venice, 1767 and it included his version of Neptune in vol. II, plate 22. Of the others, the second is owned by the Duff-Gordon-Pennington family, Muncaster Castle, Ravenglass, Cumberland, the third example was sold, Christie’s, London, 13 December 1985, lot 141 and the fourth example, formerly in the Trivulzio Collection, Milan is now in the Museo de Arte, Ponce, Puerto Rico.