Atlas

Object belonging

One's own

Category

Bronze sculpture

City

Rome

Location

Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia

Specific location

Room 16

Inventory

PV 09244

Material and technique

Bronze, dark natural patina, glossy black lacquer

Author

Studio of Severo da Ravenna

Dimensions

18 x 7.4 x 5 cm.

Origin

Barsanti Collection (1934)

Image copyright

SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma

Short description

The bronze depicts Atlas as he holds the globe on his shoulders. The globe, which is now missing, comprised various parts that made up a lamp. A complete version is in the Bargello Museum in Florence and another with only the bottom half of the globe is in the Pinacoteca Tosio-Martinengo in Brescia; other examples, some of which lack the globe-lamp, are in the Galleria e Museo Estense in Modena, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and in private collections. The detail of the hair and the beard of Atlas is very similar, though not identical, to that which appears in Severo’s work. But the careless and imprecise modelling of the musculature of the whole figure suggests that the work cannot be attributed to Severo; instead it is a Paduan bronze executed in Severo’s workshop, recreated from one of his models.

Pietro Cannata

Bibliography

L. Pollak, Raccolta Alfredo Barsanti (Trecento-Settecento), catalogue of the collection, Bergamo 1922, no. 17 p. 32; A. Santangelo, Museo di Palazzo Venezia. Catalogo delle sculture, Rome 1954, p. 30; P. De Winter, Recent Acquisition of Italian Renaissance Decorative Arts. Part I: Incorporating Notes on the Sculptor Severo da Ravenna, in "Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art", LXXXIII, 3, 1986, pp. 101 and 134, note 52.