Venus Chastising Cupid
- Object belonging
- One's own
- Category
- Bronze sculpture
- City
- Rome
- Location
- Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia
- Specific location
- Room 17
- Inventory
- PV 09300
- Material and technique
- Bronze, natural yellowish patina, blackish light lacquer
- Author
- Niccolò Roccatagliata and Sebastian Nicolini (studio)
- Dating
- c. 1600
- Dimensions
- 19.6 x 8 x 9 cm.
- Origin
- Barsanti Collection (1934)
- Image copyright
- SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma
Short description
In the various catalogues for the exhibition of Italian Renaissance Bronzes in London, Amsterdam and Florence (1961-1962), differences in opinion are recorded on this bronze’s author. In the English catalogue, the statue is assigned to an unknown Venetian artist of around 1575, the same artist who modelled the Three Graces of the Galleria Estense in Modena. In the Dutch catalogue, a consonance with the modelling of the group of Three Graces in Modena (assigned to Niccolò Roccatagliata) was acknowledged, but the work was attributed to Giovanni Francesco Susini, who was also considered the author of the Putti Playing in a Shell. The Italian catalogue of the exhibition, held in Florence, shared the attribution given in the Dutch catalogue. In 1968 Pope-Hennessy, reflecting on the attributions of the English catalogue, rejected Santangelo's comparison between the Venus Chastising Cupid of Palazzo Venezia and Roccatagliata’s Three Graces in Modena. Instead he compared the catalogue's bronze with the group of the Little Pig with Four Statues, Gian Francesco Susini's work in the Bargello in Florence. The work here then, even though it is of modest quality, can be attributed to the workshop of Niccolò Roccatagliata and his son Sebastian Nicolini.
Pietro Cannata
Bibliography
L. Pollak, Raccolta Alfredo Barsanti (Trecento-Settecento), Bergamo 1922, p. 107, no. 73; A. Santangelo, Museo di Palazzo Venezia. Catalogo delle sculture, Rome 1954, pp. 54-55; Italian Bronze Statuettes, exh. cat., London 1961, no. 180; Meesters van het der Italiaanse Renaissance, exh. cat., Amsterdam 1961-62, no. 132; Bronzetti Italiani del Rinascimento, exh. cat., Florence 1962, no. 130; A. Radcliffe, European Bronze Statuettes, London 1966, p. 96; J. Pope-Hennessy, Italian Bronze Statuettes I-II, in "The Burlington Magazine", CV (Gen. 1963), pp. 14-23; J. Pope-Hennessy, Italian Bronze Statuettes I-II, in "The Burlington Magazine", CV (Feb. 1963), pp. 58-71; J. Pope-Hennessy, Italian Bronze Statuettes I-II, in "Essays on Italian Sculpture", London-New York 1968, pp. 172-198.