An Italian bronze figure of David with the Head of Goliath, inspired by a model by Bartolomeo Bellano (1440-1496), from the workshop of Severo Calzetta da Ravenna (1465/1475-before 1538), 16th century

Estimate

20,000 - 30,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

bronze

light chocolate-brown patina beneath brown lacquer, upon later black stone base.

Provenance

Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, March 24, 1973, lot 94

Exhibited

San Francisco, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, 3 March-11 September 1988, cat. no. 4

Literature

L. Camins, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection (exh. cat.), M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, 1988, pp. 23-25, cat. no. 4.
Donatello e il suo tempo: Il bronzetto a Padova nel Quattrocento e nel Cinquecento (exh. cat.), Musei Civici, Padova, 2001, p. 162.
M. H. Schwartz (ed.), European Sculpture from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, New York, 2008, no. 14, pp. 42-43

Catalogue Note

The present work is one of a small group of bronzes which loosely follow Bartolomeo Bellano's celebrated bronze statuette of David with the Head of Goliath now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (accession no. 64.304.1). Bellano, a student of Donatello, based the composition on his master's famous near life-size nude David, the first such bronze since antiquity. It has been suggested that the clothing of Bellano's David is inspired by the Martelli David, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington and attributed to Bernardo Rossellino. Many of the examples following Bellano's model are given to Severo Calzetta da Ravenna; they range widely in quality and exhibit minor design variations, as is not uncommon with Paduan bronze models. Several feature a smaller, simplified head of Goliath; the present model features a large, highly articulated head, close to the Bellano bronze, and also seen in examples from Widener Collection at the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the one in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The collar of the present bronze departs from Bellano but also matches quite closely those of the Washington and London figures. Two rectangular plugs in the shoulders and a filled aperture beneath the buttocks are characteristic of the idiosyncratic casting methods used in the workshop of Bellano's successor, Severo Calzetta da Ravenna.

RELATED LITERATURE

R. Stone, "Severo Calzetta da Ravenna and the indirectly cast bronze", The Burlington Magazine, CXLVIII, December 2006, pp. 810-819.