BY ANDREA RICCIO (C.1470-1532) AND WORKSHOP, CIRCA 1500-1520

The present head was attributed to Riccio by Leo Planiscig, the great Italian Renaissance bronze specialist, in his monograph on the artist in 1927 (loc. cit.). The modelling of the face and hair has many of the hallmarks of Riccio's finesse in handling delicate features, and is almost certainly by the same hand as the heads of several known Riccio figures including his Orpheus and his Shepherd with Syrinx (both Louvre, Paris; see Allen and Motture, op. cit., nos. 20 and 21). That Riccio worked on this small scale is attested to by the existence of a tiny self-portrait bust in bronze in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (illustrated in ibid, p. 15, fig. II.i). Recent scholarship on Riccio's oeuvre has confirmed his position as one of the most influential proponents of sculpture in bronze in the Italian renaissance.