Giacomo and Giovanni Zoffoli

Hugh Honour FRSL (1927-2016) and John Fleming (1919-2001), Villa Marchiò, Tofori, Tuscany, Italy;

Sotheby's London, 5 December 2017, lot 120;

Where acquired by Karsten Schubert Ltd

H. Honour, 'Bronze Statuettes by Giacomo and Giovanni Zoffoli', The Conoisseur, November 1961, pp. 198-205, fig. 7

A list of works offered for sale around 1795 by Giovanni Zoffoli was first published by Hugh Honour (op. cit. p. 205) in 1961: the present bronze is a cast of the 'Fauno di Firenze', which Honour annotates as 'the faun with the cymbals in the Uffizi'. Honour further cites two known autograph versions of the bronze by Zoffoli: the present cast, then in the collection of Mr. John Fleming, and another at Schloss Wörlitz, Germany. There is a further cast by the Zoffoli foundry on deposit in the Louvre (inv. no. OA12006).

The Dancing Faun is one of the most famous antiquities in Florence, where it can be found in the Tribuna of the Uffizi. Although it is first recorded in 1665, in a book by Rubens' son Albert, there is evidence to indicate that the sculpture was in the Grand Ducal collections as early as the 16th century. The head and arms, which likely date to this period, were once said to have been restored by Michelangelo. The ancient sculpture itself is thought to be a 3rd-century copy of a bronze Greek original. The model was copied widely including: by Foggini (Versailles), Soldani (for the Prince of Liechtenstein and the Duke of Marlborough), Zoffoli, Righetti, and in glyptic form by Marchant (cf. Haskell and Penny, op. cit., for all of the above).

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

F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique, The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900, London, 1982, pp. 205-208