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Apollo with the serpent Python

Tiziano Aspetti (Padua c.1559 - Pisa 1606)

Category

Art / Sculpture

Date

1590 - 1595 (model) - 1600 - 1700 (cast)

Materials

Bronze

Measurements

670 x 187 x 198 mm

Place of origin

Venice

Order this image

Collection

Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire

NT 515026

Summary

Bronze, Apollo with the serpent Python, Tiziano Aspetti (c.1559 - 1606), Venetian, model, c.1590 - 1595; cast probably 1600 - 1700. A large bronze figure of the sun god Apollo after a model by the Paduan sculptor Tiziano Aspetti (c.1559 - 1606). Apollo is shown as a young man, standing in a twisted (contrapposto) attitude, his weight on his left leg, looking to his left. He is naked except for his sandals and his quiver, slung by a strap over his left shoulder. The lower end of his bow is just below his right hand, by quiver; bow above the hand broken off. His right foot is placed upon the head of the serpent Python, which he has just slain and the body of which lies at his feet. Holds an unidentified object in left hand. There is a crack in the surface of the figure at left shoulder, and a hole in top left arm. The figure would have originally been mounted on a bronze base to form an andiron or firedog. These large utensils, always made in pairs, were intended to stand in front of open fires and to hold the large logs which would be burnt in them. The pair to the figure of Apollo is likely to have been the god’s twin sister Diana, goddess of the night and of the chase.

Full description

This impressive large figure would once have surmounted an andiron or firedog. It represents Apollo, the god of the sun and patron of the arts, after he has slain a serpent known as Python. The story of Apollo and his slaying of Python is told in the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses (I. 439-49). As recounted by Ovid, the story is less important for its brief description of the fight between the god and the snake, than in what it tells us about the aftermath of Apollo’s victory. Having killed the Python with ‘a thousand arrows’, Apollo decided to institute a permanent memorial to his achievement, by founding the Pythian Games, the winners of which would be rewarded with an oakleaf wreath. The episode became especially popular in seventeenth-century France, where King Louis XIV, the self-styled ‘Sun King’, identified himself with Apollo. However, it is also found in Venetian art from the late fifteenth century, when illustrated editions and translations of Ovid began to appear, leading to a renewed popularity for the vivid stories told in the Metamorphoses. There are holes in the base of the bronze for fixing, suggesting that it did form the upper part of a firedog, which would have had a companion. The figure on the matching andiron would most probably have been Apollo’s twin sister Diana, goddess of the chase and of the moon. The Apollo is a cast of a model by Tiziano Aspetti, one of the leading sculptors working in Padua and Venice in the decades leading up to 1600. From around 1577 he was living in Venice in the palace of the patrician Giovanni Grimani, who seems to have been a personal friend. Aspetti may well as a young man have travelled to central Italy, including Florence and Rome, since his work suggests a close familiarity with the sculpture of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1563) and Giovanni Bologna (Giambologna, 1529-1608). His first secure work, made c. 1587/88, is a relief with the Forge of Vulcan on a chimneypiece in the Doge’s Palace in Venice. Aspetti sculpted monumental statues for the Ducal Palace as well as a statue of a giant for the Mint (Zecca) in Venice. He began from the 1590s to work in bronze, executing a pair of reliefs depicting the martyrdom of Saint Daniel for the Cathedral in Padua, as well as the bronze sculptures for the tomb of Saint Anthony of Padua in the Basilica of Saint Anthony. Aspetti died in 1606 in Pisa, in the course of a trip to Tuscany to order marble from the quarries at Carrara. Most of Tiziano Aspetti’s single figure compositions depict powerful muscular bodies in exaggerated contrapposto poses, whilst the figures also have rather small heads. The Anglesey Abbey Apollo relates especially closely to the massive figure of a giant made c. 1590-93 for the entrance to the Zecca in Venice (Claudia Kryza-Gersch, ‘Leandro Bassano's Portrait of Tiziano Aspetti’, Burlington Magazine, 140 (1998), pp. 265-67); Claudia Kryza-Gersch, ‘Tiziano Aspetti’ in ed. Davide Banzato, Donatello e il suo tempo. Il bronzetto a Padova nel Quattrocento e nel Cinquecento, exh. cat., Palazzo della Ragione, Milan 2001, pp. 342-49, p. 345, fig.2), together with a companion figure by Aspetti’s rival and fellow sculptor Girolamo Campagna (1549-1621/25). Whilst the upper halves vary, the lower section of the torso, with the left leg thrust forward and the body twisted in violent contrapposto, is almost identical in both sculptures. The drapery falling down the back of the Zecca giant is matched in the Apollo by the slightly awkward tail of the python which rises behind Apollo’s left leg. This sort of support is important in a stone sculpture, but is not necessary for a bronze, indicating the ultimate dependence of the model of the Apollo on a sculpture in marble. The pose of the Apollo also relates closely to that of the bronze statue of Justice in the Venetian church of San Francesco della Vigna, made in 1592-93 (Andrea Bacchi, Lia Camerlengo, Manfred Leithe-Jasper, “La bellissima maniera” Alessandro Vittoria e la scultura veneta del Cinquecento, exh. cat., Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trent 1999, pp. 422-25, no. 95; Kryza-Gersch, ‘Tiziano Aspetti’, pp. 345-46, fig. 3). It is conceivable that the presumed companion figure of Diana would have followed the general contrapposto pose of Peace, the companion figure in San Francesco della Vigna. The model also relates closely to a smaller figure of Apollo attributed to Tiziano Aspetti, in which the god is shown holding a lyre and a plectrum in the form of a thunderbolt. Examples are in the Robert H. Smith collection, Washington (Simonetta Cristanetti et al, Recent Acquisitions made to the Robert H. Smith Collection of Renaissance Bronzes, London 2007, pp. 40-44, no. 62), the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen and elsewhere. The god is similarly naked except for his sandals and the modelling of the body is very similar in the two models, including the face and hair, with its bow on the crown [corymbos], an attribute of Apollo. The marked contrapposto pose of Apollo is very similar, as is the turning of the head sharply left. In terms of its size the Anglesey Abbey Apollo relates to a pair of large standing nude male figures attributed to Tiziano Aspetti, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Peggy Fogelman, Peter Fusco and Marietta Cambareri, Italian and Spanish Sculpture. Catalogue of the J. Paul Getty Museum Collection, Los Angeles 2002, pp. 140-48, no.18) and the Robert H. Smith collection (Anthony Radcliffe and Nicholas Penny, Art of the Renaissance Bronze 1500-1650. The Robert H. Smith Collection, London 2004, pp. 116-21, no. 19), which both measure around 75 cm. in height. There are 19th-century copies of both those figures, surmounting andirons at Cliveden (NT 765949.1 and 2). The Getty and Smith figures, which may have been made towards the end of Aspetti’s relatively short life, are considerably superior in the quality of the modelling and finishing of their surfaces. The Apollo on the other hand was probably made in a Venetian foundry specialising in the production of bronze utensils such as candlesticks and andirons. Most andiron figures are rather smaller than this one; thus, the smaller Apollo figures after models by Aspetti are around half the size. However, very large andiron figures are occasionally found, for example a pair at Kingston Lacy (NT 1255192). Jeremy Warren 2018

Provenance

Acquired by Urban Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) after 1940; bequeathed to the National Trust by Lord Fairhaven in 1966 with the house and the rest of the contents.

Credit line

Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (The National Trust)

Makers and roles

Tiziano Aspetti (Padua c.1559 - Pisa 1606), sculptor

References

Christie, Manson & Woods 1971: The National Trust, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridge. Inventory: Furniture, Textiles, Porcelain, Bronzes, Sculpture and Garden Ornaments’, 1971, p. 137, Silver Strong Room.

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