A 'half set' of six late 18th century Italian patinated and parcel gilt bronze busts of Roman Emperorsprobably Roman and by Francesco Righetti (1749-1819) each clad in drapery on circular-waisted soccles below integral cartouche plaques, inscribed: AVGVSTVS, CALLICVIA, GALBA, OTHO, VESPASIANVS and TITO ,the smallest 29cm high, the largest 31cm high. (6)Footnotes:ProvenanceProperty of an important Spanish noble family, El Retiro, Churriana, Málaga, SpainRelated LiteratureDESCRIPCION DE LA CASA DE CAMPO DEL RETIRO DEL CONDE DE VILLALCAZAR. MALAGA, 1814, pp. 8-9 The entry in the 'Gallery of the Emperors' stating 'Among the works of sculpture, there is a bust of Vitellius in bronze of great merit, and six more heads, which are Augustus, Caligula, Galba, Otho, Vespasian and Titus.', the later six heads apparently being the 'half set' of busts which constitute the present lot with the first head being a larger and separate but perhaps related bust of Vitellius -now lost.Comparative LiteratureFrits Scholten [ed.], Willem van Tetrode, sculptor, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam / Frick Collection, New York, Ansterdam / New York, 2003, p. 116, no. 6Bertrand Jestaz, Copies d'antiques au Palais Farnese: Les fontes de Guglielmo della Porta', in Melanges de l'Ecole Francaise de Rome: Italie et Mediterranee, vol. 105, 1993, 1, pp. 7-48, esp. pp. 30-41, figs. 17-28Charles Avery, Soldani's mythological bronzes and his British clientele, in Sculpture Journal, XIV, 2005, pp. 8-29The tradition of producing sets of roughly half life-size busts depicting Suetonius's series of Twelve Roman Emperors began with a dozen (27cm. high) made in bronze for oval niches on the front of an elaborate wooden studio-cabinet - with other statuettes - by Willem van Tetrode (c. 1525-1580). A Dutch immigrant - as part of his journeyman years as a sculptor / bronze-founder - he had travelled to Florence (to work with Cellini) and then on to Rome, with Guglielmo della Porta. In the latter's post-mortem inventory of 1575, a dozen emperors are listed and they are thought to have been based on a set of life-size marble busts carved by Tomasso della Porta for Alessandro Farnese. The details of their cuirasses and the fall of their togas are more carefully differentiated than those on the present series, but the bases are simpler, having only small squarish cartouches below with indications of their names, e.g. 'N' for Nero (unlike the present, elaborate, baroque, cartouches with their full names given in relief in capital letters).No other sets by Tetrode are known, but - following the trail of Tetrode's later return to his native Netherlands - a silversmith in Delft, Thomas Cruse (who died in 1624) owned a number of Tetrode's models, among them sets of piece-moulds for twelve emperors. Such an artist might well have fashioned the then 'modern' curlicues round the name-labels shown on our set and spelt out their names for 'northern humanist collectors'.The famous Florentine sculptors seem not to have indulged in series of small emperor-busts during the long post-Michelangelo period, which was otherwise dominated initially by Bandinelli and Bandini (whose sculptures and busts of the Medici closely resembled ancient ones) and by the Flemish immigrant Giambologna (1529-1608). Nor have any been attributed to his followers in bronze, the two Susinis or the two Taccas, whose work stretched far into the 17th century.One has to wait until early in the following century evidence for the further distinct production of such busts in series of a dozen, with their empresses too, this time in Florence once more: a letter of 22 November 1707 from the Grand-ducal Chamberlain to the Medici Grand-dukes, Lorenzo Magnolfi, who also acted as a high-level art-agent for grandees, furnishes the names of three pioneer patrons among the British for Soldani in the role of sculptor. It was addressed to one of them, Sir John Perceval of Burton, County Cork, later Earl of Egmont (1683-1748), who spent six months in Italy while on his Grand Tour: 'you may order Messrs Arundel and Bates to reimburse me for the said heads, and for the busts and statues you did order to Signor Massimilano Soldani which are already done and packed up; and there are twenty four heads and three statues, and I hope you will be pleased with them since they are very well done ...'. Judging from this bald description, as well as from Perceval's intention expressed elsewhere that his works of art be for 'the use of an accademy (sic) of painters which he purposed to forward the erecting in Ireland', one might infer that they were after ancient prototypes. The high, even, number of twenty-four indicates probably that a set of the usual 'Twelve Caesars', with their wives, was being supplied. Soldani did indeed produce a few accomplished life-sized, highly polished busts after the antique, but so high a number suggests that these were not life-size. Disaster befell both of Perceval's shipments. They were captured by French privateers in 1707 and 1709, the spoils presumably being fed into the art market in France, unless they were melted down to make cannon. No such busts on a reduced scale - suitable for the tops of desks, cabinets or bookshelves in British libraries - are known. Thereafter, with the advent of Neo-classicism and the ever-increasing flood of adolescent British boys - steeped in the Classics, owing to the need to help create a new British Empire, the equivalent of Rome's - the onus of producing such attractive and eye-catching sets of emperors reverted to Rome. By the 1790s, ingenious goldsmith/bronze-founders in the Eternal City were producing pseudo-antiquities in commercial quantities and distributed printed price lists of their product. One from Francesco Righetti - in the international diplomatic language of French - included, among his 'Bustes avec leur Base Doree, en tout, hauts d'un palme, cinq onces', an item, 'Les douze Cesars a 12 sequins l'un' - or 144 sequins for the set. Their height - in Roman palms and inches - was therefore the same as the present series, while their surfaces and patina were meant to imitate antiquities, such as were then being excavated in Pompeii and Herculaneum: this clinches the probability that they date from the second half of the 18th century and were made in Rome. Righetti may well have fallen back on older models from the late Renaissance or early Baroque periods, such as have been described above, in order to produce his set speedily and economically.For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com
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