Giacomo and Giovanni Zoffoli

Christie's London, 6 December 2012, lot 179;

With Tomasso Brothers, London and Leeds;

From whom acquired by Karsten Schubert Ltd

The present bronze is a reduction of the older of the monumental grey-black marble centaurs which were excavated together at Hadrian's Villa in December 1736. They owe their name to Monsignor Giuseppe Alessandro Furietti, in charge of the excavations at Tivoli. The centaurs were extensively restored, and have been recorded in their present condition as early as 1738-39. Forming the pièces de resistance of Furietti's collection, he refused to sell them, even when pressured by the then Pope Benedict XIV. It is said that the Pope was so enraged by this slight, that he refused to promote Furietti to the rank of Cardinal. However, after Furietti's death, Pope Clement XIII did secure them for the Capitoline Museum, where they remain to this day. Bronze reductions of the famous centaurs were very much in vogue amongst the Grand Tour travellers of the 18th century, and both Righetti and Zoffoli cast reductions. 

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. 176-9