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Statuette of Mars, god of war

after Tiziano Aspetti (Padua c.1559 - Pisa 1606)

Category

Art / Sculpture

Date

c. 1600 - 1650

Materials

Bronze

Measurements

158 mm (Height); 42 mm (Diameter)

Place of origin

Venice

Order this image

Collection

The Argory, County Armagh

NT 565230

Summary

Sculpture, bronze; statuette of Mars, god of war; Tiziano Aspetti (c.1559 - 1606); model c.1600, cast, Venetian, c.1600 - 1650. A small statuette of the god of war, Mars, here shown naked but for his helmet. A typical example of the statuettes of deities such as Mars and Venus that were reproduced in large numbers in Venetian foundries from the seventeenth century onwards, using models by sculptors such as the Paduan-born Tiziano Aspetti. The figure of Mars is paired at the Argory with a statuette of Cleopatra. Although they work well together, the different forms of the bases suggests that they were probably not originally intended to be a pair.

Full description

A small bronze statuette depicting Mars, the god of war, naked but with a swag of drapery under his left arm, and wearing on his head a plumed helmet. He stands in a strong contrapposto pose, his right leg forwards, looking upwards to his left. His right hand once held an object, probably a sword. On an integral circular bronze base. This spirited little bronze figure is fully in the style of Tiziano Aspetti, one of the leading sculptors working in Padua and Venice in the decades around 1600. Born in Padua, from around 1577 Aspetti was recorded as living in Venice in the palace of the patrician Giovanni Grimani, who seems to have been a personal friend. He may well also 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). Aspetti’s 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. He sculpted monumental statues for the Ducal Palace as well as a statue of a giant for the Mint (Zecca) in Venice. From the 1590s Tiziano Aspetti began 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, as seen here in the Mars. His best-known single figures are a larger figure of Mars, who is often paired with a figure of Venus (Kryza-Gersch 2001). Casts of the larger Mars and Venus were often used to surmount andirons or firedogs. A large figure of Apollo at Anglesey Abbey (NT 515026), known in just a single version, was probably made as an andiron figure; its pair, now lost, would have been a figure of Apollo’s sister, the goddess Diana. One other version of the figure at the Argory is currently recorded, formerly in the Skulpturensammlung of the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, but lost since the Second World War (Planiscig 1921; Bode 1930, no. 259). In the Berlin version, Mar’s right hand is held closer to his side and he holds a staff, which led Leo Planiscig to incorrectly identify the figure as Hercules. Another version of the model was recorded in the collection of small bronzes assembled by the Dutch collector Jacob de Wilde (1645-1721), which was published in a catalogue in 1700, with engravings by Jacob’s daughter Maria de Wilde (Wilde 1700, Pl. 30). In the engraving, Mars is depicted on a similar small circular base to the version at the Argory, and he is also shown holding a sword. The Argory figure was almost certainly also originally equipped with a sword. The Berlin figure is paired with a figure of Venus, whilst at the Argory the Mars has as its pair a figure of Cleopatra (NT 5653231). This juxtaposition of a god with an historical figure does not make sense iconographically or historically. Although the Cleopatra is also cast from a model that may be by Tiziano Aspetti, it has a rectangular rather than circular base, suggesting that the two figures, although they may have been together for a long time, were not necessarily conceived as a pair. Standing about 16 cms. high, the Mars and Cleopatra are too small to have been used on firedogs, but a little too large for figures made for mounting on cabinets. They may simply have been made as independent statuettes. However, in a good demonstration of how sculptors’ models could be used in many different ways, the Mars was employed as the central figure in a Venetian bronze doorknocker that does not survive, but was recorded in the eighteenth century in a drawing by the painter Giovanni Grevembroch, part of an album depicting doorknockers then to be seen on the doors of palaces in Venice (Grevembroch 1879, p. 5). The knocker with the Mars was on the door of the Palazzo Longo ai Servi in Rio della Sensa in Venice, and is a variant of a common type of knocker, often associated with Tiziano Aspetti, in which a central figure is flanked by two figure of lions forming the typical lyre shape of door knockers at this time. Whilst the models for the two figures at the Argory may well have been made by Tiziano Aspetti himself, the bronzes are likely to have been cast in one of the many foundries operating in Venice in the seventeenth century. Jeremy Warren October 2022

Provenance

By descent; Walter McGeough Bond (1908-86), by whom given to the National Trust in 1979.

Makers and roles

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

References

Wilde 1700: Signa Antiqua e Museo Jacobi de Wilde veterum poetarum carminibus illustrate et per Mariam filiam aeri inscripta, Amsterdam 1700, Pl. XXX Grevembroch 1879: Giovanni Grevembroch, Raccolta di Battitori a Venezia, Venice 1879, no. 5. Planiscig 1921: Leo Planiscig, Venezianische Bildhauer der Renaissance, Vienna 1921, pp. 581, 584-86. Abb. 639-40. Bode 1930: Wilhelm von Bode, Die italienischen Bildwerke der Renaissance und des Barock II. Bronzestatuetten, Büsten und Gebrauchsgegenstände, Berlin 1930, p. 53, no. 259, Taf. 72. Kryza-Gersch 2001: Claudia Kryza-Gersch, ‚Original Ideas and their reproduction in Venetian foundries: Tiziano Aspetti’s Mars in the Frick Collection – A Case Study’, in ed. Debra Pincus, Small Bronzes in the Renaissance, Washington 2001, pp. 142-57.

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