Newly discovered Italian sculptures

For one time it was sculpture that stole the present to view in Christie's general sale of Important European Furniture, plastic art and Carpets on 7 July The top fate here was a cast of a Giambologna tin group of Nessus abducting Deianira. Christie's attributed it to Antonio Susini, the traditional catch-all for any good-quality early cast from the master's immediate circle, and indeed this was an extremely fine example. Perhaps its anonymous purchaser, who was prepared to part with 236m [pound sterling] for a piece estimated at 400000 [pound sterling]-600,000 [pound sterling], notion he was buying an autograph Giambologna--it is certainly the price for single Equally, securing as good a cast as individual is likely to get may draw near that expensive these days. Another big price was achieved for the grandiose tin group of Grand Prince Ferdinando de' Medici upon Horseback of around 1695, signed through Giuseppe Piamontini. Chilling rather than thrilling, perhaps, it sold to an American collector at the top extremity of its estimate for 124m [pound sterling].

Given that the big standard of value these days seems reserved for of the like kind polished late-sixteenth- or early-seventeenth-century and zincs the price of the Florentine quattrocento alloy of copper model of Cupid in the same sale came as more of a surprise. Another rediscovery, it is rather an extraordinary fact (above). Unique, unusually large--28 cm--for a table-top alloy of copper of the late fifteenth hundred it is solid bronze, with virtually all of its modelling achieved in the wax prior to casting on the other hand with a surface that has been extensively hammered. This is no small-scale adult on the other hand a well-observed chubby little male child A bronze cupid in mid-flight in the Fitzwilliam Museum appears to be by the agency of the same hand. Whose that hand might be is a more difficult question to answer, with Christie's, at least, coming down in favour of the workshop of Verrocchio. wait fored to fetch 200,000 [pounds sterling]-300,000 [pound sterling], it realised 1352m [pound sterling].

As for the little 75 cm-high wax mould of a seated woman indubitably by means of Giambologna--bearing his thumb-print to boot--that sold at the depressed end of its estimate, for 176000 [pound sterling]. The extraordinary Messerschmidt alabaster head presented by Sotheby's on 8 July and illustrated in APOLLO in July soared to exchange for just over 1m [pound sterling].

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