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Lot Essay
With its previous attribution to Cellini and its illustrious provenance which includes the Borghese and Rothschild families, this bronze has a fascinating and complex story. For most of the 20th century, it was attributed to the greatest Renaissance metalworker, Benvenuto Cellini. The titans of art history, Wilhelm von Bode and W. R. Valentiner, both attributed the bronze to Cellini. In 1911, J. P. Morgan bought two examples, one of which, the version now at the Frick Museum, caused a firestorm of publicity and achieved a staggering price at Christie’s, London. More recent scholarship has attributed the inkwell to the sculptor Taddeo Landini. The original attribution to Landini was proposed by Pope-Hennessy and others have since agreed and a comprehensive dossier has been compiled by D. Allen, at the time curator of sculpture at the Frick and now the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Active in late 16th century Florence and Rome, Landini was hired for commissions for both Pope Sixtus V and Pope Clement VIII. However, his most celebrated commission – and one of Rome’s most beloved and charming monuments -- is his Fontane delle Tartarughe (The Turtle Fountain), in the Piazza Mattei. Landini collaborated with the architect Giacoma della Porta and the fountain was later embellished with the bronze turtles, possibly added by Bernini, in the 1650s. Besides the four later versions in public collections in the United States, perhaps the best-preserved later version is the one hidden in an enchanted Gilded Age garden in Tuxedo Park, New York.
The present inkwell, remarkably, is still intact. There is only one other complete version of this inkwell, that in the J.B. Speed Art Museum. Other versions of this inkwell, or portions of it, are in the Frick Collection, the Ashmolean Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum (three versions), and the Museo Civico, Brescia. And there are variants, probably later 18th or 19th century casts, some with rectangular bases, in the National Gallery of Art, the Morgan Library, the Louvre and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. There is also a version of just the upper group of Virtue overcoming Vice in an English private collection as well as other versions, or portions of it, that are presently unlocated.
Active in late 16th century Florence and Rome, Landini was hired for commissions for both Pope Sixtus V and Pope Clement VIII. However, his most celebrated commission – and one of Rome’s most beloved and charming monuments -- is his Fontane delle Tartarughe (The Turtle Fountain), in the Piazza Mattei. Landini collaborated with the architect Giacoma della Porta and the fountain was later embellished with the bronze turtles, possibly added by Bernini, in the 1650s. Besides the four later versions in public collections in the United States, perhaps the best-preserved later version is the one hidden in an enchanted Gilded Age garden in Tuxedo Park, New York.
The present inkwell, remarkably, is still intact. There is only one other complete version of this inkwell, that in the J.B. Speed Art Museum. Other versions of this inkwell, or portions of it, are in the Frick Collection, the Ashmolean Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum (three versions), and the Museo Civico, Brescia. And there are variants, probably later 18th or 19th century casts, some with rectangular bases, in the National Gallery of Art, the Morgan Library, the Louvre and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. There is also a version of just the upper group of Virtue overcoming Vice in an English private collection as well as other versions, or portions of it, that are presently unlocated.