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Lot Essay
Although his artistic career was extremely short-lived, Gaetano Zumbo was arguably one of the finest wax modellers active in the second half of the 17th century. Born to noble parents in Syracuse, Sicily, he took up art after a long period of self-criticism and self-tuition. He made his debut as an artist in Bologna in 1691 and was soon after taken into the service of Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany. By 1695 Zumbo left Florence for Bologna, and then went on to Genoa where he entered into partnership with Guillaume Desnoues, a French surgeon, for whom he made exact models in coloured wax of the human anatomy to assist medical studies. His collaboration with Desnoues was, again, short-lived and by 1700 he had moved to Paris and obtained a royal privilege for the manufacture of anatomical preparations in coloured wax. He died in Paris in 1701.
Zumbo's work demonstrates a rigorous and scientific observation of the various stages of decomposition of the human body and, essentially, the inevitable decay of human beauty and power. The present lot, which is identified by Pyke (loc. cit.) as C.68 in Zumbo's oeuvre, is extremely comparable to Zumbo's other documented works (see Pratesi, loc. cit.) in terms of style, composition and details, and combines formidable realism with almost romantic images of young, well developed, bodies comdemned to the vilest metamorphoses. The Marquis de Sade's first impressions upon seeing Zumbo's work are as follows:
'So powerful is the impression produced by this masterpiece that even as you gaze at it your other senses are played upon, moans audible, you wrinkle your nose as if you could detect the evil odours of mortality… These scenes of the plague appealed to my cruel imagination: and I mused, how many persons had undergone these awful metamorphoses thanks to my wickedness?' (Sade, op. cit.).
Zumbo's work demonstrates a rigorous and scientific observation of the various stages of decomposition of the human body and, essentially, the inevitable decay of human beauty and power. The present lot, which is identified by Pyke (loc. cit.) as C.68 in Zumbo's oeuvre, is extremely comparable to Zumbo's other documented works (see Pratesi, loc. cit.) in terms of style, composition and details, and combines formidable realism with almost romantic images of young, well developed, bodies comdemned to the vilest metamorphoses. The Marquis de Sade's first impressions upon seeing Zumbo's work are as follows:
'So powerful is the impression produced by this masterpiece that even as you gaze at it your other senses are played upon, moans audible, you wrinkle your nose as if you could detect the evil odours of mortality… These scenes of the plague appealed to my cruel imagination: and I mused, how many persons had undergone these awful metamorphoses thanks to my wickedness?' (Sade, op. cit.).