Two Satyrs

Object belonging

One's own

Category

Bronze sculpture

City

Rome

Location

Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia

Specific location

Room 17

Inventory

PV 10776-77

Material and technique

Bronze, patina

Author

German Artist

Dating

c. 1530

Dimensions

8.8 x 5 x 4.5 cm. and 9 x 6 x 3.5 cm.

Origin

Auriti Collection (1963); Guido von Rhò Collection, Berlino

Image copyright

SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma

Short description

When these two statuettes were in the Guido von Rhò Collection in Berlin they were tentatively attributed to a northern Italian artist of the 16th century. On moving to the Auriti Collection, though, Planiscig recorded them in the inventory as works by a northern Italian artist of the second half of the 15th century. Santangelo went further, identifying them as Paduan bronzes, modelled on antiquity. These attributions, though, are not convincing. The work was probably not fused in Italy but in southern Germany, in Nuremberg; indeed there are noticeable similarities with works by the so-called Berlin “Master of the Nereid”, active around 1530. The small size of the satyrs, the extreme care taken in the muscular definition of the animals and the precision of their features seem to indicate that the bronzes were intended to be worked by a goldsmith, perhaps to be rendered in silver. They are not, then, independent objects but were designed to decorate objects such as nautilus shell cups or tankards.

Pietro Cannata 

Bibliography

E. W. Braun, Die Bronzen der Sammlung Guido von Rhò in Wien, Vienna 1908, p. 22, pl. XXXI; L. Planiscig, La Collezione Giacinto Auriti, Vienna 1931, no. 8; A. Santangelo, Museo di Palazzo Venezia. La Collezione Auriti, Rome 1964, p. 16.