An Italian bronze figure of Bacchus after the antique, 17th century, probably Rome

Estimate

7,000 - 9,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

bronze

golden patina beneath black lacquer, upon later stepped marble plinth.

Literature

M. H. Schwartz (ed.), European Sculpture from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, New York, 2008, no. 8, pp. 32-33

Catalogue Note

A version of the present model was among the bronzes ordered by Louis XIV from Italy in 1664, first registered in the journal of the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne in 1669 (see Les Bronzes de la Couronne, p. 13 and no. 45). A reduction of the ancient marble Faun from the Giustiniani collection in Rome, one of several 1st/2nd century copies after a Praxitelean original (see Haskel and Penny, Taste and the Antique, p. 210), it has been adapted to represent Bacchus with the addition of a cluster of grapes in the right hand. A version was exhibited in Natur und Antike in der Renaissance, 1985, and was there given to Pietro da Barga (no. 135), and another was sold at Sotheby's London, July 11, 2001, lot 120.