Old Master Sculpture & Works of Art
Old Master Sculpture & Works of Art
Bust of Brutus
Lot Closed
December 6, 02:00 PM GMT
Estimate
3,000 - 5,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Italian, probably Florence, 18th century
Bust of Brutus
bronze, on a black painted socle
bronze: 20cm., 7 7/8 in.
27cm., 10 5/8 in. overall
The present model is derived from the Capitoline Brutus, a Roman bronze portrait head mounted on a Renaissance marble bust, which was first recorded in the drawings of Maarten van Heemskerk in the 1530s. Based on the profile’s likeness to a coin in the collection of Fulvio Orsini, the head was identified in the 16th century as representing Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of the Roman republic in the 6th century B.C. While many modern scholars have preferred to emphasise the influence of early-3rd-century Greek portraiture on the head, some have acknowledged the possibility that it does represent Brutus, and may have been cast in the 1st century B.C., when portrait busts of early Roman figures were fashionable. The earliest reference to a copy of the bust occurs in 1790 in the letters of the French painter Jacques-Louis David, while other Grand Tour versions are known from the 18th and 19th centuries (Christie’s, New York, 24th May 2001, lot 139). The present bust is particularly well cast in the hair and is reminiscent of reductions by master sculptor Massimiliano Soldani Benzi (1656-1740).