A lion attacking a horse
Italian School
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
c. 1800 - 1850
Materials
Bronze, Marble
Measurements
200 x 181 mm; 292 mm (L)
Place of origin
Rome
Order this imageCollection
The Argory, County Armagh
NT 565232
Summary
Sculpture, bronze; Lion attacking a horse, after an antique marble; Italian, Rome, c. 1800-1850. A small bronze reduction of a Hellenistic marble group, one of the celebrated ancient marble sculptures to be seen in Rome, in the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitoline. This cast is a nineteenth-century reduction made for the tourist trade.
Full description
A bronze sculpture of a lion attacking a stallion, with the lion having forced its unfortunate victim to the ground and plunged its teeth into the horse’s flank, whilst with both its front paws it holds down its opponent. The horse tries to kick out with its hind legs, and twists its neck round towards the lion, its eyes and nostrils wide with fear. Mounted on a rectangular giallo antico marble base. The Lion attacking a horse is a Hellenistic sculpture, dating possibly to the third century B.C. (Haskell and Penny 1981, no. 54), which was first recorded in Rome as early as 1347 and 1363, already displayed on the Capitoline, the seat of civic government in the city of Rome. From an early date, the sculpture was seen as a symbol of Roman magnificence and good government; but it was also admired for its sculptural qualities, not least by Michelangelo Buonarroti, who is said to have praised it to the skies. In 1594 the sculpture was heavily restored, giving it the appearance it retains to this day, with the head, the legs and the tail of the horse, as well as the rear limbs of the lion all being added. Today it is displayed in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. It was after its restoration that the sculpture came to be widely admired and frequently copied. The Italo-Flemish sculptor Giovanni Bologna (Giambologna, 1529-1608) made a small version with a companion group of a lion attacking a bull, which were cast in large numbers as bronze statuettes, mainly by his chief assistant Antonio Susini (1558-1624). Giambologna’s reductions are known in two main types, one a distinct variant, with the horse’s head twisted far back and the tail in a different position, the second and rarer type more closely following the restored antique sculpture. Many of the earlier copies and adaptations are based on Giambologna’s first type, as are the paintings on this theme by George Stubbs (1724-1806). But in general, from the eighteenth century copies became more closely based on the marble in Rome. They include a full-size copy in stone at Rousham Park in Oxfordshire, made in 1743 by Peter Scheemakers (1691-1781). This small bronze version is also an accurate copy of the marble in Rome; an efficient and routine production, it was clearly made for the tourist trade. The giallo antico base is the same type of marble as the base of the chariot (biga) at the Argory, another reduction from a celebrated sculpture in Rome (NT 565233). The two bronzes were probably bought from the same shop and perhaps also made in the same foundry. Another nineteenth-century version of the lion attacking a horse, formerly in the collection of Michael Hall, was sold at auction (Christie’s London, 500 Years: Decorative Arts Europe Including Oriental Carpets and Including Sculpture from the Collection of Michael Hall, 11 June 2010, lot 81), whilst a smaller version, mounted on an oval marble base, is in the Cornia and Lenzi collection, Bologna (Cornia and Lenzi 2015, I, pp. 390-91). Jeremy Warren October 2022
Provenance
By descent; Walter McGeough Bond (1908-86), by whom given to the National Trust in 1979.
Makers and roles
Italian School, 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, pp. 250-51, no. 54. Cornia and Lenzi 2015: Mario Cornia and Rossana Lenzi, Bronzetti e Rilievi dal XV al XVIII secolo, 2 vols., Bologna 2015