Giacomo and Giovanni Zoffoli

With Tomasso Brothers, Leeds and London;

From whom acquired by Karsten Schubert Ltd

The Farnese Hercules was first recorded at the Palazzo Farnese by Aldrovandi in 1556. It was said to have been discovered in the Baths of Caracalla in 1546. The statue was restored by Guglielmo della Porta, who had made the legs on the recommendation of Michelangelo. According to della Porta, the head had been discovered six years before the body in a well in Trastevere. The original legs were later discovered but only reunited with the body in 1787. The gigantic figure became one of the most celebrated antiquities in Rome, where it was engraved by Hendrik Goltzius. Inscribed by a sculptor named Glycon, it is thought to date to the early 3rd-century AD and follow an earlier Greek original by Lysippus or his school. Along with the rest of the Farnese collection, the Farnese Hercules was inherited by the Bourbon Kings of Naples, and brought to Naples in 1787 following restoration by Carlo Albacini. It is today housed in the Museo Archaeologico Nazionale, Naples. A cast of the Farnese Hercules by the Zoffoli foundry is in the Detroit Institute of Arts (inv. no. 1997.111).

Karsten Schubert (1961-2019)

Karsten Schubert was an influential Anglo-German art dealer who played a leading role in promoting the Young British Artists (YBAs) in the 1980s and 1990s. Schubert exhibited the likes of Rachel Whiteread, Alison Wilding, Gary Hume, Michael Landy and Ian Davenport, as well as then more internationally well-known artists such as Gerhard Richter and Bridget Riley. Later in life Schubert founded Ridinghorse a high-end art historical publisher, named after an art space he had opened in 1995 with Charles Asprey and Thomas Dane.

In Schubert’s obituary in The Guardian, Charles Darwent noted that, ‘For all his love of Britain and English tailoring – he became a British citizen not long before his death – he had a depth of culture and historical understanding that remained admirably German…. When he wrote his own history of museology, The Curator’s Egg (2000), it was with the easy assurance of one who could quote Marcus Aurelius from memory’.

Karsten Schubert was a member of the Faculty of the Fine Arts of the British School at Rome, and sat on the Advisory Board of Drawing Room London. His personal art collection including drawings by Cezanne and Mondrian, as well as ancient sculpture. Schubert’s interest in Grand Tour bronzes cast after antique models reflects both his erudition and his rich intellectual heritage.

RELATED LITERATURE

H. Honour, 'Bronze Statuettes by Giacomo and Giovanni Zoffoli', The Connoisseur, November 1961, pp. 198-205