Circle of the Master of the Budapest Abundance (active circa 1530-1550)

Important European Bronzes, exh. cat. Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, London, 2016, pp. 70-73, no. 10

New York, Carlton Hobbs LLC, Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, Important European Bronzes, 2016

In the 16th century the southern German cities of Nuremberg and Augsburg were at the centre of a cultural exchange with Italy. Their adoption of Renaissance art and thought resulted in the thriving production of bronze sculpture, as embodied in this exuberant allegorical figure of Abundance. Identified by her cornucopia, Abundance is represented in an all’antica mode characteristic of the northern European interpretation of classical iconographies. While her elegant braided hairstyle and flowing drapery reference the humanist ideal of Renaissance Italy, the figure’s strong anatomy, with muscular limbs and a generous midriff, betrays the distinctively German naturalism of Albrecht Dürer’s female nudes. 

Nuremberg in particular specialised in the use of figurative bronze sculpture as fountains, ranging in size and context from the public to the private. With spouts around its base, the present bronze appears to have formed part of a domestic fountain, such as the still complete Diana and Actaeon fountain of circa 1560 in the Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. no. M.1-1955), whose figures include comparable standing female nudes.

Notably, the present Abundance relates to several casts of a model depicting the same subject, whose author is referred to as the Master of the Budapest Abundance, after the example in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. Alongside other versions housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna and in the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Budapest Abundance is thought to have been conceived as a fountain figure by a master active in either Augsburg or Nuremberg around 1530-1540. Though adopting a different pose, the present bronze compares closely to the Budapest Master’s model in aspects such as her hairstyle, her stance, and the design of her cornucopia (which is lost in some versions, but survives in the Vienna cast). An even closer stylistic parallel for the present figure’s features, with prominently incised eyes and a pointed chin, as well as her corpulent physique, is found in a half-figure of a woman from a wall fountain illustrated by Bange (op. cit., fig. 140) and catalogued as Augsburg, circa 1550-1560. A similar dating for the present Abundance, and a likely origin in Nuremberg, are substantiated by a bronze statuette of a Farmer of circa 1560 in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg (inv. no. Pl. O. 798), which stands on a similarly worked naturalistic base.

RELATED LITERATURE
E. F. Bange, Die Deutschen Bronzestatuetten des 16. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, 1949, figs. 75, 137, 140, and 177; W. D. Wixom, Renaissance Bronzes from Ohio Collections, The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975, no. 178