Summary

Sculpture, bronze; Nessus and Deianira; cast by Antonio Susini (1558-1624), model by Giambologna (1529-1608); Florence, late sixteenth or early seventeenth century. This outstanding sculptural group depicts the centaur Nessus carrying off Deianira, wife of the classical hero Hercules, after the centaur had played a trick on the couple. Nessus offered to carry Deianira over a river but, while Hercules was still swimming across, Nessus on the far bank then galloped off with her. Although he shot Nessus with an arrow, Hercules was poisoned by the centaur’s blood, dying a horrible and lingering death. The group is a version of a model by the Italo-Flemish sculptor Giovanni Bologna (Giambologna, 1529-1608). It was very probably cast by one of Giambologna’s principal assistants Antonio Susini. This beautifully-finished bronze is an excellent demonstration of why Antonio Susini was famous among his contemporaries for his skills as an artist specialising in the casting and then the finishing of bronze sculptures. The group has, probably since at least the early eighteenth century, been paired with the group of an Abduction of a Sabine Woman, recently attributed to the Dutch sculptor Adriaen de Vries (c. 1556-1626; NT 652911). Casts of the two bronzes were made in Paris from around 1720. Examples of these copies appear in French eighteenth-century auctions, with some pairs surviving in museum collections today.

Full description

The centaur Nessus, half man and half horse, is depicted rearing on his hind legs, his gaze directed towards the ground and his tail flying behind. With both arms he clasps the struggling figure of Deianira, who balances precariously on his back, her left leg bent under her whilst the other leg stretches out. Both arms are also stretched outwards, whilst she twists her body in her efforts to escape. A swag of drapery beneath Deianira, incised along its border, falls down on the left side of the centaur. The bronze is mounted on an ebonised wooden base with gilt-bronze mounts, in the style of André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732). The sculpture is today paired with a bronze depicting another abduction, this time of a Sabine woman, by the Dutch sculptor Adriaen de Vries (NT 652911). The bronze sculpture is superbly modelled and cast, apparently in one piece. Some of the modelling, for example the draperies, is especially angular and sculptural. The sculpture has been very carefully finished after casting, with the use of tools such as small chisels, hammers and files. There are traces of a golden patination, for example on Nessus’s right torso, below the breast. This is one of the best-known classical stories to involve centaurs, mythical creatures that combined a horse’s body with a human torso. The story of the abduction of Hercules’ wife Deianira by the centaur Nessus appears in various ancient literary sources, but is perhaps best-known from its telling in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (IX, 102-58). When Hercules and Deianira came to the river Evenus, the centaur Nessus offered to carry Deianira across on his back but, having arrived on the far bank ahead of Hercules, who was still swimming across, he then tricked the couple by carrying her off. Although Hercules rescued Deianira by shooting him with an arrow, the dying Nessus had a cruel revenge. He whispered to Deianira that if she wished to ensure her husband’s continuing love, she should anoint Hercules’ shirt with some of his centaur's blood. Too late, Deianira discovered as soon as Hercules donned the shirt, that the poison in Nessus's blood would condemn the hero to an agonising and lingering death. In this composition Nessus rears up, clasping Deianira with both hands, whilst she struggles to escape his grip, pushing down with her left foot onto the centaur’s back. The inventor of this powerful composition, the Italo-Flemish sculptor best known as Giambologna, was born in Flanders but spent most of his career working in Florence, as court sculptor to the Medici. He became arguably the most influential sculptor of the entire sixteenth century. Giambologna made monumental masterpieces in marble and bronze, but was also a leading sculptor of the small bronze. Since the most popular of his models were cast in multiple versions, often for use as diplomatic gifts to be sent to courts throughout Europe, his small bronzes became widely known beyond Florence. At Anglesey Abbey there is, for example, a statuette of a bathing woman, in a version recorded in the 17th century in the French royal collections (NT 515035). Giambologna ran an extremely busy workshop, so was forced to delegate almost all the casting and finishing of his small bronze sculptures to trusted assistants and collaborators, notably Antonio Susini (1558-1624) and Pietro Tacca (1577-1640). Only a relatively small number of casts can be associated with Giambologna’s own lifetime. His models continued to be made by Susini, Tacca and their successors in Florence, but also elsewhere in Italy and further afield, over a very long period. The subject of the abduction of Deianira by Nessus must have greatly appealed to Giambologna, since it combines two of his great interests as a sculptor - the human and especially female body in various poses and contortions, and animal sculpture. Three different models of the Nessus and Deianira were produced in his workshop, categorised as A, B and C in a landmark exhibition on Giambologna held in 1978 in Edinburgh, London and Vienna (Avery and Radcliffe 1978, pp. 109-16, nos. 60-67). The earliest, type ‘A’ (Avery and Radcliffe 1978, nos. 60-65; Avery 1987, pp. 144-45, 263-64, nos. 90-92) includes a version documented as made in 1576 and today in Palazzo Colonna in Rome. Other examples are in the Musée du Louvre, Paris and the Huntington Art Museum, San Marino. They are a little smaller than the types ‘B’ and ‘C’ and there are some variations, especially in the figure of Deianira, who in this first type is shown lying on the centaur’s back, partly held fast by a length of cloth wrapped around her upper body. The Sudbury Hall group is an outstanding example of the so-called type ‘B’ model, the first casts of which must have been made before 1586 (Avery and Radcliffe 1978, no. 66; Avery 1987, p. 264, no. 93). It represents quite a significant modification of the first design. Instead of reclining somewhat submissively upon the centaur’s back, Deianira now struggles more violently, her left foot placed on Nessus’s back, her right leg hanging helplessly down, whilst he grips her more firmly in his arms and looks down towards her. Whereas in Giambologna’s first model, the swag of drapery was used to help separate the two figures, thus preserving an element of decorum, in this more violent composition the cloth has all but fallen off, trailing down Nessus’s left flank, whilst his grasping of her by her left breast is more sexually explicit and aggressive. The lifting of Deianira’s body, making a quite wide gap between the woman’s body and the back of the centaur, helps to create an additional point of interest in the composition, whilst also increasing the sense of lightness within it. The third model, type ‘C’, is much larger than its predecessors, about twice the height of types A and B, and is a complete re-working of the group, with the composition reversed and a degree of decorum restored to the interaction between the two protagonists. There are examples of this type in the Galleria Colonna in Rome, the Musée du Louvre in Paris and the Wallace Collection, London (Warren 2016, no. 113). It has sometimes been thought that the composition of the type B variant was invented not by Giambologna but by Antonio Susini, his chief assistant for many years. This is because an example is listed in a 1609 inventory of the Salviati family, described as ‘a centaur in bronze with a woman in his arms, by the hand of Susini’ (‘Un centauro di bronzo con una femmina in braccio di mano del Susini’). Antonio Susini joined Giambologna’s workshop as a young man and became for many years one of his principal assistants, before setting up his own workshop in 1600. He was celebrated for his skills as a caster and finisher of bronzes, Giambologna accordingly delegating to him much of the work of making his bronzes, from preparing the wax models to the casting and then the laborious afterworking of the cast bronze with tools such as wire brushes, small chisels and hammers to create its refined surfaces. The proposed attribution to Susini rests on the precise meaning of the statement ‘by the hand of Susini’. In fact, it was very probably not intended to mean that he invented the composition, but rather that he was responsible for the casting and finishing of the bronze. There is therefore little reason to doubt that that the invention of this superb composition, with its physical and psychological tensions, was Giambologna’s. Susini certainly seems to have been responsible for casting the great majority of the finest versions of this model. Indeed, it is probably the type B model, the present composition, that was referred to in a story related by the Florentine art historian Filippo Baldinucci in his life of Antonio Susini, first published in 1688. Baldinucci wrote that Susini cast a bronze of a centaur abducting Deianira, after a model by Giambologna, who was so pleased when he saw the bronze that he sent his then assistant Pietro Tacca to purchase it for the high price of 200 scudi. According to Baldinucci, after this Susini cast many more versions which he sold for the same price. This dates the story to after 1600, when Susini set up in business on his own account. The type B model of Giambologna’s Nessus and Deianira is very much rarer than the type A, in part because it is a more complex composition and so more difficult to cast successfully. The earliest visual evidence for the type B bronze is a large painting by Willem van Haecht, in the Rubenshuis, Antwerp, depicting the gallery of the Antwerp art dealer Cornelis van Geest. It is one of a number of bronze models by Giambologna that may be seen on a table in the room. So far as surviving versions are concerned, the example at Sudbury Hall is one of very few with a secure or strong claim to being early casts. Others include a cast in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, recorded in the collection of king Louis XIV in 1707 and another also formerly in the French royal collections (Baratte 1999, nos. 175 and 177), together with one now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (Avery and Radcliffe 1978, no. 66; Radcliffe and Penny 2004, no. 26). A good version was recently sold at auction (A Life of Discerning Passions: The Collection of H. Rhodes Sr. and Patricia Hart, Christie’s New York, 5 February 2026, lot 24). Another version was in France around 1700, when it formed part of the collection of the sculptor François Girardon (1628-1715). Towards the end of his life hundreds of sculptures by Girardon or from his private collection of sculptures were illustrated in a grandiose series of thirteen engravings known as the ‘Gallerie de Girardon’, made from drawings by René Charpentier and published by Nicolas Chevallier and François Eringer (Souchal 1973; Maral 2015, pp. 382-413). The Nessus and Deianira featured on plate 2 of the Gallerie de Girardon, where it was described as ‘A bronze group of the Rape of Deianira by the centaur Nessus made by Giambologna, [cast and] finished by A Susini’ (‘Groupe de Bronze du Ravissement de Déjanire par le Centaure Nessus fait par J. de Boulogne réparé par A. Soucine’). Girardon owned a number of sculptures that had once formed part of the collections of Cardinal Richelieu (Armand Jean du Plessis, duc de Richelieu, 1585-1642); the Nessus and Deianira is very likely to be the example owned by Richelieu and listed in the inventory drawn up after his death in 1642, in which it is described in very similar terms to the caption for the Gallerie de Girardon (Boisisle 1881, p. 20, no. 60). It is entirely possible that the bronze now at Sudbury Hall is identifiable with the version that formerly belonged to Cardinal Richelieu and subsequently François Girardon. It was listed in the inventory drawn up after Girardon’s death in 1715 (no. 154bis; Maral 2015, p. 535) and was then sold at a public sale on 3 March 1718 (Maral 2015, p. 423). The reason why Girardon’s bronze could be the example now at Sudbury Hall is that it was around this time that copies of the Nessus and Deianira began to be made in Paris paired with casts of the Abduction of a Sabine Woman, its companion at Sudbury today (NT 652911). A French cast of the Abduction of a Sabine alone, in the Staatliche Museen in Dresden (Inv. H4 155/33; Holzhausen 1939, pp. 162-63, 185, fig. 2), is one of a large consignment of bronzes and other sculptures acquired in Paris by the court official Raymond Leplat on behalf of Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony (1670-1733) and sent to Dresden in 1715. The next documentary record of these bronzes to survive comes in the post mortem inventory of the French sculptor Claude Devaux (c. 1670-1720), with the Abduction of a Sabine Woman now paired with the Nessus and Deianira (Fouchy-Le Bras 2007, p. 46; Odile Fouchy-Le Bras, ‘From Art Casting to the dissemination of Models: the Role of Founders in the 18th Century’ in Bresc-Bautier, Scherf and Draper 2009, pp. 236-41, figs. 3-4). The Richelieu/Girardon Nessus and Deianira could conceivably have been bought by someone in 1718, with the intention of pairing it with the Abduction of a Sabine Woman, although there were two casts of a model described as Nessus and Deianira among an earlier consignment of bronzes sent from Paris to Dresden in 1699 (Holzhausen 1939, pp. 182-83). In any event, the two bronzes clearly at some point around this time began to be reproduced in the form of pairs, certainly in the workshop of Claude Devaux and possibly elsewhere too. These pairs are distinguished by their bases or ‘terrasses’, which are distinctively French, embellished with small rocks and plants. Some pairs of these bronzes appear in French eighteenth-century auction sales, invariably described as from models by Giambologna. For example: Gaignat sale, 14 February 1769, lot 63; Sainte-Foix, 22 April 1782, lot 21; Chevalier de Clesne, 4 December 1786, lot 148. Examples continue to be recorded into the nineteenth century, e.g. Baron Michel, 1 February 1847, lot 96, formerly collection of M. de Montbreton; anonymous sale, 15 January 1849, lot 84. Of course some of these are likely to be for the same objects as they passed through successive collections. A number of pairs of the French casts of these bronzes are known today, including examples in the Wallace Collection, London (Invs. S116 and S132; Wenley 2002, pp. 46-49) and the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich (Weihrauch 1956, pp. 100-102, nos. 124-25). Other versions pass through the art market quite frequently, but some of these may be later casts made in the nineteenth century. The reproductions are very close copies of the original models, which must in all likelihood have been the bronzes now at Sudbury. These are now mounted on ebonised wooden bases with relatively crude gilt-bronze mounts, which could date from the nineteenth century. Several of the sale references are to examples on ebonised wooden bases with gilt-bronze mounts, for example the pair in the 1782 Sainte-Foix sale, described as mounted on 'ebonised wood bases, richly decorated with gilded bronzes.’. So it is possible that one or more of the sale references relates to the Sudbury pair, but at present it is not known how and when these remarkable bronze groups arrived at Sudbury Hall. In 1905 they were on display in the Drawing Room (Country Life 1905, p. 488). Jeremy Warren March 2026