Quatre hommes noirs dont l'un, au centre, a un singe en croupe, sont à cheval sur des girafes ; ils portent chacun une lance et se dirigent vers la gauche ; devant eux, un cavalier porte une branche d'arbre ; nombreux personnages à pied et à cheval. Bordure à bouquets stylisés sur fond bleu formant à la partie supérieure une sorte de guirlande pendante portant des clochettes et des fruits,

The great master of the small bronze in the early Renaissance, Andrea Briosco, called Riccio, trained first as a goldsmith in the workshop of his father, Ambrogio Briosco. He owes his renown to the bronze statuettes and functional objects he cast for a small circle of clients, particularly in his native Padua. Many of them were made in homage to the art of antiquity; Riccio borrowed motifs from ancient sources and combined them in novel ways to give them fresh meaning for his humanist patrons in that university town. Although members of his workshop and his followers issued, on a level of mass production, bronze oil lamps as well as inkwells and candlesticks, Riccio himself produced only a handful of them, including some unique oil lamps, which transcend utility to become masterpieces. Long in the collection of the Rothschild family, this is one of three superlative examples of its kind; the others are the Morgan Lamp, in the Frick Collection, New York, and the Cadogan Lamp, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The three share many motifs, but with a fertile imagination Riccio incorporated them into each lamp in such a way that they seem to be in a constant state of flux, changing their guise from one object to the other before our eyes. While its owners may have prized it too highly to use it for lighting, this is a functioning oil lamp. The hinged lid opens by means of the handle topped with a grotesque head —  its upward movement limited by the ram’s head spiraling behind —  and reveals two connecting reservoirs for oil. When the lid is closed, the grotesque head appears to be blowing on a wick that rose from a tongue protruding from the opening below. Curling tendrils above and below serve to suspend the　lamp from hooks or to support it as struts on a table. Overall, the lamp takes the form of a fanciful ancient ship or galley. Its prow is like a nautical battering ram; the Cadogan Lamp has a spike that refers to this function and a proper poop deck behind.[1] By curling the spike into a continuous element with two loops, Riccio found a more elegant solution for the Museum’s lamp. The tendrils buoy up the body of the lamp, lending lightness and a sense of mobility to the otherwise dense bronze mass. Of the three superb lamps mentioned here, this is the only complete example, and it demonstrates how lid, handles, and loops were intended to work.On the lid a pair of putti perch, embracing swanlike creatures that emerge from the swelling bronze surface and tuck their necks back into it. The Cadogan Lamp lid supports a single putto astride a dolphin that swims in the opposite direction from the boat; a hole in the poop may indicate where a second figure once stood, possibly the helmsman, as Anthony Radcliffe hypothesized.[2] An engraving of the Morgan Lamp, made in 1652, when it was already missing its lid, shows a lyre-playing putto seated against the rear handle; the remains of a foot on the forward lip suggest that another putto stood facing the wick.[3] Therefore, all of the lamps originally had figures of children riding on top. The Morgan Lamp is in the shape of a classical boot, not a ship. But these fantastic objects were not meant to be taken literally: they make reference to ancient prototypes of lamps,[4] and with their riding figures they also suggest both the richly decorated floats that Renaissance artists created for triumphal processions and illustrations of such elaborate chariots in works like Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499).Encrusted with shells, bucrania, harpies, garlands, and other classical decorative motifs, the body of each lamp is also decorated with friezes of putti. The Museum’s lamp displays a dozen in the relief on one side and eleven on the other. In the first, the twelve naked children dance, play with a ram, step over an ewer, and blow on a horn; in the second, some dance, one plays a pipe on the far right, and a kneeling group sit in a circle around a ram at the left. These friezes become narrower at one end, and as they taper, each child remains clearly delineated, but the poses shift from upright to crouching to seated.The three lamps are closely related to Riccio’s most substantial work in bronze, the Paschal candlestick in the basilica of San Antonio (Il Santo) in Padua, since similar motifs are present on all. He began the colossal liturgical object in 1507, was apparently interrupted in 1509, and completed it only in 1516. Although the dating of the various parts of the candlestick is conjectural, most scholars place the three lamps within the period of its making or shortly afterward.[Ian Wardropper. European Sculpture, 1400–1900, In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, no. 14, pp. 50–53.]Footnotes:[1] Anthony Radcliffe. "Bronze Oil Lamps by Riccio." Yearbook (Victoria and Albert Museum), no. 3 (1972), pp. 29–58, pp. 29 – 35, provides the most complete description of the Cadogan Lamp as well as the most comprehensive analysis of all the known lamps by Riccio. Peta Motture’s account in Andrea Riccio: Renaissance Master of Bronze. Exh. cat. by Denise Allen, with Peta Motture et al. Frick Collection, New York; 2008–9. New York and London, 2008, pp. 174 – 81, no. 13, is the most recent.[2] Radcliffe 1972, p. 31.[3] Fortunius Licetus. De Lucernis antiquorum reconditis libb. sex. Udine, 1652; Radcliffe 1972, fig. 30.[4] Motture (in Riccio 2008, p. 181) points to an ancient lamp in Lyons as a prototype.

Trois personnages à cheval sur des girafes, accompagnés de cinq cavaliers portent chacun une lance dont ils transpercent des lions que l'on aperçoit entre les pattes de leur montures. Bordure à bouquets stylisés sur fond bleu formant à la partie supérieure une sorte de guirlande pendante portant des clochettes et des fruits.

Trois personnages à cheval sur des girafes se dirigent vers la gauche ; l'un d'eux, au centre, a le pied posé sur une cage à oiseaux ; une girafe n'a pas de cavalier ; au premier plan, trois personnages à pied, deux à gauche et un à droite ; l'un d'eux porte une lance et deux autres tiennent en laisse des lionceaux. Bordure à bouquets stylisés sur fond bleu formant à la partie supérieure une sorte de guirlande pendante portant des clochettes et des fruits. (bande supérieure refaite).

In the half-human, half-animal features of the mythical race of satyrs, Andrea Briosco, called Riccio, found great expressive potential. Furthermore, the creatures’ classical associations appealed to the sculptor’s learned clientele, who purchased the bronze statuettes that were his preferred medium. These diminutive objects could also be made into useful desktop equipment for writing or lighting by placing containers for ink, sand, or oil in the satyrs’ arms. A hole in the shell shouldered by the Museum’s figure may have held a chain to tether a snuffer for candles stuck on the lamp’s pricket, while the gadrooned vase under his right arm would have contained ink. Although it seems almost oversize for its purpose, the statuette was nevertheless a practical object: the lamp was raised high enough to cast a wide light, and the ink was proffered at a reasonable level to dip in a quill. In 1985 Dieter Blume made the interesting proposal, now generally accepted, that this figure, which had long been identified as a satyr, in fact represents Pan, the Greek deity with legs and horns of a goat, whose power over nature could sow panic or stir creation.[1] The flaming oil and ink thus must symbolize both his sway over the elements and the inspiration sought by any scholar who read and wrote with their aid. While functional, it is above all a powerful sculpture. Against the limited group of autograph works by Riccio in this category and the extensive number of workshop productions, this one stands out on account of its large size and forceful presence. Its model is a well-known pair of lifesize antique marble satyr-atlantes once in the Della Valle collection in Rome and today in the Musei Capitolini in that city.[2] Denise Allen is of the opinion that drawings of those ancient satyrs by artists such as Bernardino da Parenzo may have been the sculptor’s actual source.[3] She points out that their upraised arms and the baskets on their heads have been adapted to this small sculpture’s pose and function but that the tensile strength of the metal has been exploited here to widen the creature’s stance into a dynamic stride. Specific features borrowed from the Della Valle satyrs, such as the closely spaced horns, the ram’s skin strapped over the shoulder, and the heavily muscled torso, reveal that Riccio paid close attention to the source.While there is no question that this is a masterful Renaissance bronze, its attribution to Riccio and its date have been debated. The pioneer of Renaissance bronze studies, Wilhelm von Bode, was the first to propose Riccio as the artist, and his opinion was enthusiastically seconded by the foremost expert on North Italian bronzes, Leo Planiscig.[4] Some scholars have recently returned to the question of authorship, noting some anomalies in the statuette’s physical characteristics, particularly the pronounced musculature of the torso and the relatively wide waist. For example, Denise Allen, who finds that the closest comparison for the treatment of the torso is the nude beggar in Riccio’s Saint Martin relief (Galleria Giorgio Fraschetti alla Ca’ d’Oro, Venice; probably after 1513), observes that the beggar’s waist is narrower and his chest smoother than Pan’s.[5] Its closest counterpart, she notes, is the Seated Satyr with a Conch Shell in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, which also has an animal skin strapped to the chest and holds similar (though not identical) objects, which, like Pan’s shell and vase, were chosen from a stock of models used in accepted works by Riccio. But the Seated Satyr is sometimes attributed to a sculptor in Riccio’s workshop and dated to the 1520s, which raises questions about the Metropolitan Museum’s bronze. Many features do favor Riccio’s authorship. The striding pose is also found in the artist’s Warrior and Strigil Bearer (both are in private collections);[6] in fact, Riccio demonstrated an interest in testing to the limit the balance of many of his sculptures, and this example is no exception. Richard E. Stone has identified technical qualities that keep Pan within the boundaries of Riccio’s working manner. [7] He notes that the composition of the bronze used here and in the Strigil Bearer and Shouting Horseman (Victoria and Albert Museum, London) is characterized by a medium tin content, light leading, and the same pattern of minor trace elements; moreover, the core pins of all three are very thin. James Draper originally placed Pan early in Riccio’s career, about 1507 – 10; however, as Allen proposes, the statuette’s forceful stance and musculature may be better explained as the product of his mature style. Perhaps Riccio adjusted his later style to suit a particular client, as Nicholas Penny wondered.[8][Ian Wardropper. European Sculpture, 1400–1900, In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2011, no. 15, pp. 54–55.]Footnotes: [1] Dieter Blume. "Beseelte Natur und ländliche Idylle." In Natur und Antike in der Renaissance, pp. 173–97. Exh. cat. Liebieghaus, Frankfurt am Main; 1985–86. Frankfurt, 1985, pp. 184 – 85.[2] Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900. New Haven, 1981, pp. 301 – 3, no. 75, figs. 158, 159.[3] Denise Allen in Andrea Riccio: Renaissance Master of Bronze. Exh. cat. by Denise Allen, with Peta Motture et al. Frick Collection, New York; 2008–9. New York and London, 2008, p. 149, fig. 8.2.[4] Wilhelm von Bode. Die italienischen Bronzestatuetten der Renaissance. 3 vols. Berlin, 1907–12. [Vols. 1 and 2 published 1907.], vol. 3, pp. 22, 29, pl. ccxliii; Planiscig 1927, pp. 346 – 47, 484, no. 116, fig. 417.[5] Allen in Riccio 2008, p. 147.[6] Warrior is in a private collection in the United Kingdom; Strigil Bearer is in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill, New York. [7] Richard E. Stone. "Riccio: Technology and Connoisseurship." In Riccio 2008, pp. 81–96, pp. 88 – 90.[8] Nicholas Penny. "Andrea Riccio: New York." [Review of the exhibition "Andrea Riccio: Renaissance Master of Bronze," at the Frick Collection, New York, and the accompanying publication.] Burlington Magazine 151 (January 2009), pp. 64–65, p. 65.

Caravane de girafes et de zèbres, de la tenture de L’Histoire du Portugal et de l’Inde

Caravane de girafes et de zèbres, de la tenture de L’Histoire du Portugal et de l’Inde

Description