Silenus holding the Infant Bacchus
Francesco Righetti (Rome 1749 – Rome 1819)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1800 - 1899
Materials
Bronze
Measurements
238 x 112 x 95 mms
Order this imageCollection
Blickling Hall, Norfolk
NT 355066
Summary
Bronze sculpture, Silenus holding the Infant Bacchus by Francesco Righetti (Rome 1749 – Rome 1819). Male figure leaning on tree trunk, carrying child in his arms. Sculptor's mark on back of plinth. Companion to NT 355065 (BLI/M/6). The original Roman copy after early Hellenistic was found in Rome in the 16th century in the Gardens of Sallust near the Quirinal. Its ownership changed a number of times between 1569 when it is first recorded, and in 1807 Napoleon acquired it for France. A bronze copy of the Imperial Roman marble statue (Louvre, Paris), discovered in Rome in 1569, and purchased in 1807 by Napoleon from the Villa Borghese, Rome. The Roman marble is probably a copy of a lost Greek bronze original of the late 4th century BC by Lysippus or one of his followers.
Provenance
Bequeathed with the hall and contents by Philip,11th Marquess of Lothian (1882-1940)
Makers and roles
Francesco Righetti (Rome 1749 – Rome 1819), sculptor Giacomo Zoffoli (c.1731 - 1785), sculptor
References
Haskell and Penny 1981: Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique, The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500 - 1900, New Haven and London, 1981, 77, fig. 162