Attributed to Hans Reichle (c. 1570-1642) South German, 1st half 17th century

with a wood column with a veined green marble base; on a mottled red and black marble socle

Private Collection, Switzerland
With Daniel Katz, London, 1983, from whom acquired by the present owner 

Grabski, J. (ed.), Opus sacrum. From the collection of Barbara Piasecka Johnson, exh. cat. Royal Castle Warsaw, 1990, cat. 59, pp. 314-17

Overall the condition of the bronze is very good. There is some minor wear and dirt consistent with age. There is a fair amount of rubbing to the dark lacquer subtly revealing the colour of the bronze. There is a small area of greening to the back of the proper right knee. There are a few minor chips to the socle, a larger one at the lower edge on the proper left side of the figure.
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This model of Christ at the column seen in a highly expressive, dancer-like pose, of which other casts exist at the Grunes Gewolbe in Dresden, in a private collection in New York, and elsewhere, has traditionally been attributed to Hans Reichle. This is a reasonable hypothesis, as the Christ is strongly inspired by Giambologna's Christ at the column in the Bargello, but the handling of the anatomy, the rendering of the face and the softness of the hair are comparable to the work of Northern sculptors of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Born in Upper Bavaria, Reichle was one of Giambologna's foremost assistants in Florence in the 1580s and 1590s. He assisted with the ephemeral decorations for the wedding ceremony of Ferdinando de' Medici and Christine of Lorraine in 1589, and helped cast Giambologna's Equestrian monument of Cosimo I (1589-98). As no other sculptor of his generation, Reichle crossed the Alps regularly in order to complete projects in Bavaria, Tyrol and Tuscany. These include the over lifesize bronze figure of Saint Michael vanquishing Lucifer on the facade of the Augsburg arsenal (1603-09), a series of 37 slightly under lifesize figures of Ancestors of Cardinal Andreas of Hapsburg in Bressanone, and a panel of the Nativity of Christ for the bronze doors of Pisa Cathedral (1601), which the sculptor is likely to have modelled and cast during a return visit to Florence. The figure of Christ at the column must have been created during the early phase of Reichle's career because of the similarity in drapery to that of Giambologna.

RELATED LITERATURE
H.R. Weihrauch, Europaische Bronzestatuetten: 15.-18. Jahrhundert, Braunschweig 1967, p. 334; T.B. Bruhn, Hans Reichle (1565/70-1642): A reassessment of his sculpture, Ph. D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1981, no. 33, p. 178.