Jacopo Tatti detto il Sansovino

(Firenze, 1486 - Venezia, 1570)

Based on

Bronze with brown patina; Measurements with base: 34.5x13xx13 cm. Measurements without base: 30x11x11 cm.

This beautiful bronze statuette is inspired by the marble culture created by Jacopo Sansovino in 1515 to decorate the gardens of Giovanni Bartolini in Florence. It was later donated to Cosimo I and placed in Palazzo Vecchio, together with works by Michelangelo, Baccio Bandinelli and Benvenuto Cellini. Our sculpture fits into the taste of the Grand Tour of the late 18th century and the early 19th century, a period in which large foundries created copies of the most famous classical Renaissance sculptures present in Italian collections. The sculpture of our Bacchus was very successful and was also translated into bronze by great sculptors; among all, we remember Massimiliano Soldani Benzi (Montevarchi, 1656-1740), who created the bronze now preserved in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello (Florence) with the variant of excluding the satyr from the composition.

Our bronze faithfully reproduces, in scale, the entire original composition of Sansovino. Furthermore, it presents a lively and original modeling that, together with a certain materiality not free from small casting defects, places it among the ancient copies of the subject probably in the XVIII century.

Bibli. Eike D. Shmidt, Sandro Bellesi, Riccardo Gennaioli, Shaped by Fire, exhibition catalogue, Le Sillabe ed., Livorno, 2019, p. 72, fig. 7.