Gilt Bronze Putto, Circle Of Jacopo Sansovino

Gilt bronze Putto, circle of Jacopo Sansovino.
Gilded bronze.
Veneto.
ca. 1580. h. 5,3 in.

The Victoria & Albert Museum holds a set of seven gilded bronze statuettes attributed to Roccatagliata—seven puttiplaying various musical instruments, likely originating from the bronze ornamentation of an important cabinet. The present statuette, similar to the bronzes in the Victoria & Albert Museum in size, gilding, and the shape of the base, likewise appears to have originated as part of a piece of furniture. Like the bronzes at the Victoria & Albert Museum, this putto likely held a musical instrument in its hands.

However, it lacks the animation and movement seen in Roccatagliata’s bronzes, and its closeness to a gilded bronze puttoin the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, dated ca. 1580, suggests an earlier date of creation—closer to the more austere poses and heavy drapery of the bronze statuary produced in the workshops of Jacopo Sansovino. Several similar gilded bronze statuettes, showing an older style than Roccatagliata’s, are attributed to sculptors from Sansovino’s circle such as Girolamo Campagna or Camillo Mariani. However, it is most often futile to try to assign a specific name to Venetian bronzes from the second half of the 16th century, given the organization of sculptors’ workshops in Venice at that time. Sansovino himself, in a 1550 letter to Ercole II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, admitted to routinely allowing his assistants to entirely design the bronzes, which he, more often than not, never even touched. The chasing, finishing, and even the modeling of the clay or wax prototype may have been carried out by several assistants. Nonetheless, the very type of this putto, its gilding, its posture, and its comparison with the aforementioned statuettes allow us to attribute it to the circle of Jacopo Sansovino and to date it to the third quarter of the 16th century.

Sources

Antonio Santangelo, Museo di Palazzo Venezia. Catalogo delle sculture, Rome, 1954; Wolfgang Wolters and Norbert Huse, The Art of Renaissance Venice. Architecture, Sculpture and Painting. 1460–1590, Chicago, 1990; Pietro Cannata, Museo nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia. Sculture in bronzo, Rome, 2011.