IN THE MANNER OF QUENTIN-CLAUDE PITOIN, CIRCA 1765-1770

The figure of the boar on this pair of chenets closely relates this lot to the oeuvre of the bronzier Quentin-Claude Pitoin (c. 1725-1777). Pitoin’s most well-known chenets, modeled as a boar paired with a recumbent stag, were supplied by him for Madame du Barry's salon octagone at Fontainebleau in 1772 (see P. Verlet, Les Bronzes Dorés Français du XVIIIe Siècle, Paris, 1987, pp. 57-59). The pair was later placed by Louis XVI in his library at Versailles, and thereafter at the Palais des Tuileries. Both Pitoin and the bronzier responsible for these chenets were clearly influenced by the ancient Porcellino sculpture that was discovered in Rome some two centuries earlier, alongside other figures making up a hunting scene. The marble boar is documented in a Roman guide from 1556, but by 1568 had been moved to Florence as a gift from Pope Pius IV to Cosimo de’ Medici, who subsequently installed it in the Uffizi by 1591, where it remains (inv. 1914 n. 63). Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was widely admired as one of the most impressive and naturalistic work of ancient sculpture. Pietro Tacca and Antonio Susini both executed the figure in bronze and it quickly became an immensely popular subject among Grand Tourists in the 1700s. Tacca’s rendition even eclipsed the ancient original in popularity, making it an enduring subject for gilt and patinated works of contemporaneous decorative art.