Lot Essay
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE:
London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Giambologna 1529-1608 - Sculptor to the Medici, 5 October - 16 November 1978, nos. 69-72, pp. 118-120. C. Avery, Giambologna - The Complete Sculpture, Oxford, 1987, pp. 56, 136-137, fig. 61.
Giambologna's bronze statue of the Sleeping Nymph derives ultimately from the antique marble of Ariadne in the Vatican Belvedere (Avery, op. cit., p. 56). The nymph is often depicted with a satyr crouching at her feet, and it is a composition that Giambologna and his followers copied often, in slightly differing variations. The only group of the Sleeping Nymph with Satyr which was documented in Giambologna's lifetime is that now in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden, which was listed in the first inventory of the Dresden Kunstkammer in 1587, although it may have entered the collection as early as 1577. A definite terminus ante quem for the invention of this composition can be found in a document which states that Francesco I sent his brother Cardinal Ferdinando '(une femina) nuda in atto di dormire' in 1584. Although the satyr is not mentioned in this document, we can assume the composition to be the same as Giambologna is not known to have made any other isolated sleeping female figure in the form of a small bronze (London, loc. cit.).
London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Giambologna 1529-1608 - Sculptor to the Medici, 5 October - 16 November 1978, nos. 69-72, pp. 118-120. C. Avery, Giambologna - The Complete Sculpture, Oxford, 1987, pp. 56, 136-137, fig. 61.
Giambologna's bronze statue of the Sleeping Nymph derives ultimately from the antique marble of Ariadne in the Vatican Belvedere (Avery, op. cit., p. 56). The nymph is often depicted with a satyr crouching at her feet, and it is a composition that Giambologna and his followers copied often, in slightly differing variations. The only group of the Sleeping Nymph with Satyr which was documented in Giambologna's lifetime is that now in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden, which was listed in the first inventory of the Dresden Kunstkammer in 1587, although it may have entered the collection as early as 1577. A definite terminus ante quem for the invention of this composition can be found in a document which states that Francesco I sent his brother Cardinal Ferdinando '(une femina) nuda in atto di dormire' in 1584. Although the satyr is not mentioned in this document, we can assume the composition to be the same as Giambologna is not known to have made any other isolated sleeping female figure in the form of a small bronze (London, loc. cit.).