Massimiliano Soldani Benzi (1656-1740) (and workshop)
H 12 1/5 x L 3 3/4 x P 4 inch
Further images
Athlete Holding a Vase
Bronze, gold-reddish lacquer patina
Firenze, early 18th Century
Massimiliano Soldani Benzi (1656-1740) (and workshop)
Art Loss Certificate: S00238727
Provenance:
Julius Böhler Gallery, Starnberg (Germany
Private Collection US up to 2023
H 31 x L 9,5 x P 10 cm
H 12 1/5 x L 3 3/4 x P 4 inch
This refined bronze statuette is made after the antique marble statue currently in the Uffizi in Florence.
The statue of Apoxyomenos (or the “Scraper”), most likely came from Rome around the middle of the 16th century and was taken to the Uffizi during the period of its construction, in the late 1500s, after a period on display in the Nicchie Room in Pitti Palace. The statue, of a nude athlete, is a copy of a bronze original that can be dated to around the mid 4th century BC, attributed to a pupil of Polycletus, famed sculptor from the latter half of the 4th century BC. The athlete is portrayed while cleaning his strigil or rather, passing it over the back of his left hand. It almost seems that the artist wanted to put a face with the features of an adolescent against the extremely developed body that allowed the athlete to take part in boys’ competitions, earning successes in weighty arenas - possibly boxing, as the slightly swollen ears would seem to suggest.
In age terms, these competitions were reserved to athletes who had not reached adulthood. Some think that athletes up to the age of nineteen were allowed to participate, while others believe that the upper limit was eighteen years of age. What is certain is that the winners of these matches were given honours and celebrations. Suffice to mention Antipatrus of Miletus, youth boxing champion in 388 or 384 B.C. Dionysius I tried to corrupt him into saying he was from Syracuse, but on the statue’s engraving, carved by Polycletus II, it was stated that he was the first of the Ions to win in Olympia, where Athenaeus of Ephysus also received great honours as winner in the same competition, perhaps in 352 B.C.
In this context, it may make sense that two of the bronze copies of the Athlete with a Scraper seem to be from the same workshop, somewhere in Asia Minor. The existence of faithful copies in different materials (marble, basanite, and bronze), accompanied by smaller versions and variations, does in any case confirm that the original Athlete with a Scraper was a famous piece even in the Classical period. The shape of the eyes and the half-closed lips on the Florence statue appear clean-cut and elegant, while the model of the face has a sober, classical, yet refined style, which point to a period between 130 and 150 AD. This can be confirmed to a certain extent by the palm trunk support, a type in use on statues of the period.
Certainly, the clear golden bronze and the high degree of finish on the present statuette of Uffizi Apoxyomenos bear out Soldani’s claims about his technique. The particular way in which the figure is fixed by metal tangs extending down from the soles of the feet through slots in the separately cast socle, and secured by iron wedges through slots in the tangs, is typical of the technique used in Soldani’s workshop.
The bronze statuettes after ‘Antique’ and ‘Old Master’ sculptures in the Uffizi Gallery and elsewhere in Florence
This series was first studied and published by Professor Klaus Lankheit (Lankheit 1958). Some of them - and their general implications - have also been discussed by Dr. Hans Weihrauch (Weihrauch 1956). The present author summarized this for an exhibition in Toronto in 1975 and later published some revisions and discoveries.
The subjects eventually were not confined to ancient sculpture, but by 1723 included ‘modern’ works by Michelangelo, Jacopo Sansovino, Cellini and Giambologna, presumably included by Soldani as alluring additions for the ‘Grand Tourists’ to his commercially successful series. Two of the latter, for example, are to be found in Blenheim Palace.
The bronze statuettes are intimately connected with a set of twelve wax figurines that Soldani sent from Florence on 21 February 1702 to Johann Adam, Prince of Liechtenstein, to serve as models for full-scale garden statuary for his newly-erected Palace in Vienna. The wax statuettes were cast in sections from piece-moulds taken from a number of small models made by one of Soldani’s assistants after the most celebrated Antique statues in the collection of the Medici Grand-Dukes in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The same piece-moulds may have been used in Soldani’s workshop for casting the bronze versions. As none of the waxes or garden sculptures has survived and there is no descriptive inventory of them, we can reconstruct the lost series only by a process of deduction from various inter-related strands of evidence.
In December 1706 Soldani wrote and offered Prince Johann Adam first refusal on a set of twelve bronzes which he had produced: ‘I find that I have made twelve bronze statuettes for a Cabinet, half a braccio [30cm.] high, some of which are nude and some partly draped. They are copied exactly from the most famous statues in this city. It occurs to me that they might be something for Your Highness, so I am offering them to you to see if you are interested, before I propose them to any other clients. The final price will be 30 piastres apiece. Wishing that you be well served, if you would graciously deign to let me know your decision, then I can resolve the matter. I am letting you know my reasons as an assurance of my deepest obligation’.[1]
The lapse of nearly five years between the production of the wax figurines from the existing piece-moulds and the appearance of the bronzes on the market is hard to account for, and one wonders whether Soldani was writing in good faith, or merely indulging in some judicious salesmanship, when he suggested that the series was being offered to the Prince before any other client. In any case, he would presumably have supplied any that might have been required by his permanent employers in Florence, the Medici, who owned the original statuary that he was copying!
The eight examples now in the Bargello Museum have an implicit Medicean provenance, though they have different types of socle and therefore may have been made at slightly different times; while the statuettes that were inventoried in Düsseldorf in 1730 would probably have been given to the Elector by his father-in-law Grand-Duke Cosimo III, soon after Soldani made them available: the Elector’s wife, Anna Maria Luisa de’Medici, was a favourite of her father and had married in 1691.
However, that may be, we do not know the composition of the set in question, although it is generally assumed to have been identical with that of the waxes sent earlier and sets of statuettes in bronze that Soldani made later on. Furthermore, it is not known whether – in the face of the Prince’s negative reply of 4 January 1707 – Soldani succeeded in selling him a set, even though he wrote again in more pressing terms on 7th February. There is some reason to suppose that Soldani was successful, at least perhaps in part, for two bronze statuettes after Florentine Antiques and of the right dimensions (about 30cm. high), a Venus de’Medici and a Dancing Faun, do feature in catalogue of the Liechtenstein Gallery made in 1767 by Vincenzo Fanti (nos. 119-120).
By 31 July 1716, a set of a dozen statuettes of “the best statues in the Gallery here” had been purchased by Lord Burlington for £100 (presumably some of those now in Chatsworth House, Derbyshire).
Thereafter, unpublished documentation in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, indicates that Soldani began in earnest to cast further sets of statuettes probably from the models originally made for Liechtenstein.[2] Among his lengthy correspondence with Zamboni, an Italian agent living in London, the first letter referring to such a series is dated 16 March 1719 [f. 103v.]: in it Soldani writes, “If you decide to have the 12 statuettes copied from the Antique made in bronze, you have already heard my thoughts, and I shall await your orders” [“Se Vs: si risolvera di far fare le 12 statuette di bronzo, copiate dall’antico, ella ha sentito il mio pensiero, et attendero i suoi ordini”].
Seemingly he was instructed to cast the statuettes, for some five months later, on 8 August 1719 [f. 124r.], having received in the interim some substantial bills of exchange, he writes: “Please advise me again whether I am to send you the twelve bronze figures referred to in my other letter to you [missing], for Baron Dagen has not sent any response and I am still making them for you, in accordance with what Mr Berenstadt tells me” “[Mi avvisi ancora, se io deva mandarli le dodici figure di bronze accenateli con altra mia, gia che il Sig.re Baron Dagen non risponde cosa alcuna, e queste ancora fanno per Lei, che tanto mi dice il Sig.re Pernestot”]. A page or two later [f. 126 v.], Soldani states, “In the big crate, you will find the 12 bronze figures… [together with various other items]” [“Nella Cassa grande, trovera Vs le 12 figure di bronzo, …”]. So it seems that he did decide to forward them to London without awaiting further specific instructions, and so this series may be still in England: possibly it is to be identified with one of the otherwise undocumented, partial, sets in Chatsworth House, the others of which could have come into the Devonshire family from the estate of Lord Burlington, with whom Soldani had previously been in touch.[3]
Four years later, on 29 July 1723 [f. 191], Soldani wrote to Zamboni again about some similar statuettes, including two new subjects, not after the Antique:
“I [wonder] if you might have the chance of helping me to dispose of a little group of two figures copied from Giambologna, that represent Virtue treading down Vice [the original marble group, now in the Bargello Museum, is known commonly today as “Florence triumphant over Pisa”]; a little Bacchus in the act of walking which comes from Sansovino, the famous sculptor [Jacopo Sansovino’s original marble group is now in the Bargello Museum]; a soldier with a vase in his hands, copied from the Antique; and the little Faun playing the foot-clappers, also copied from the Antique – and the four pieces are each half a braccio high including their bronze bases and are highly polished and would cost nine doubloons each if you could elicit any interest - they are beautiful and finished” [“Se Vs. avessi riscontro di farmi dar via un gruppetto che sono due figure copiate da Gio: Bologna, che rappresentano La Gioventu che calca il Vizio, Un Bacchetto in atto di camminare che viene dal Sansovino scultore pure famoso, Un Soldato con un vaso in mano, copiato dall’antico, et il faunetto, che suona I crotali, copiato pure dall’antico, e questi 4 pezzi sono ciascheduno alti mezzo braccio con la sua base di bronzo assai puliti e costeranno nove Doppie l’uno per se sentisse qualche riscontro, sono belli e terminate”].
A further four years later, on 24 April 1727 [f. 264], Soldani again alluded to such statuettes, this time to the standard series, which he was desperate to dispose of:
“I have also got twelve statuettes, all the same size, copied from the most beautiful marble statues of this Gallery [the Uffizi] all worked tastefully and cast in the most beautiful metal. If you had the chance of helping me to dispose of them all together and if the money were paid to me here, it would induce me to do you the favour of letting you have them for 20 scudi each in our currency, even though all are worth far more. They are very suitable for mounting on cabinets and would make a fine effect, if that suited you” [“Ho bensi dodici statuette, tutte di una grandezza, copiate dalle piu belle statue di marmo di questa Galleria, e di un bellissimo metallo. Se avesse riscontro di farmele dar via tutte assieme, e che mi fusse pagato qui il danaro, m’indurrei a far piacere, con darle per 20 scudi l’una di nostra moneta, con tutto che vaglino assai piu, e queste son proprissime per adattarsi in Gabinetti che farebbano una nobile comparsa tutto per suo avviso”].[4]
The ageing sculptor referred again to this set in a letter of 28 August [f. 266] with some additional sales patter: “I find myself with twelve finished figurines all of the same size which are after the Antique, and I think that I sent you some on a previous occasion, but these ones are easy to dispose of because they are completely finished, and, as I would like to raise some money for a particular investment, it would give me great pleasure to let you have them all for two hundred scudi, though I believe that on other occasions I have sold them for nearly three hundred: they are all diligently fashioned, and when you have a chance - as I hear - to compare my works in bronze with that of others whom I hear are in touch with you [Soldani means his rival Foggini, the Medici Court Sculptor], I believe that you will see the difference of work and finesse and gracefulness, because a direct comparison clarifies everything. These ones are particularly well worked and the expressions of the faces and the taste in finishing them to perfection [are evident]. I do not set out to deceive you, but I genuinely believe that by making a [direct] comparison you must see the difference.” [“Mi ritrovo fatto dodici figurette, tutte di una grandezza le quali vengono dall’Antico, e mi pare d’avergline mandate un’altra volta, ma queste son facili ad esitarsi perche io me le trovo fatte, farei ogni sorte di piacere, perche ho caro di far danaro per un mio particolare interesse, le darei tutte e dodici per scudi dugento, e Io credo, che altre volte le ho venduto vicino a scudi trecento: queste son fatte con tutta diligenza, e quando Lei avera occasione come sento di paragonare I miei lavori di bronzo con altri che sento si contrattano per Vs. Ill;ma, credo che vedra la diferenza del travaglio e della finitezza, e grazia perche il paragonare e quello che chiarisce tutti, e costi particolarmente sone bene operate e le arie di testa et Il gusto nel ridurle finite, io non pretendo conciarle fare comparire quello che non e, ma mi persuado che paragonando si debba vedere la diferenza”].
Exactly three months later, on 28 November 1727 [f. 268-9], Soldani was able - with a note of ill-concealed triumph – to tell his dilatory correspondent: “I would willingly have agreed to the deal of taking the clocks in exchange for the twelve bronze statuettes, had I not on the third of this month given them to His Electoral Highness of Cologne who was passing by on his way to Rome, so that I could not do anything else, for I was at a standstill with the job.” [“Volentieri averei accordato il partito di pigliare gl’orologi per conguaglio delle dodici statuette di bronzo, non fino sotto di 3 del corrente le diedi a sua Altezza Elettorale di Colonia che passo di qui per andare a Roma, onde non potei far di meno, perche restai all’impegno”.]. Reading back through Soldani’s last three letters, one can deduce that this set was ready for the market by 24 April 1727, if not before. The purchaser was Clemens August of Bavaria, a member of the Wittelsbach dynasty and Archbishop-Elector of Cologne (1700-1761), and so it likely that this fine set of Soldani statuettes was sent back to Germany and may be the source of several fine examples now in museums there [e.g. Bavarian National Museum, Munich].
Literature:
G.A. Mansuelli, Galleria degli Uffizi, Le Sculture, Rome, 1958, pp. 50-51.
[on Soldani’s reduction]
K. Lankheit, “Eine Serie barocker Antiken-Nachbildungen aus der Werkstatt des Massimiliano Soldani”, in Mitteilungen des deutschen archäologischen Instituts Römische Abteilung, 65, 1958, pp. 186-97.
K. Lankheit, Florentinische Barock Plastik\; Der Kunst am Hofe der Letzten Medici 1670-1743, Munich, 1962, pp. 139-43.
A. Ciechanowiecki and G. Seagrim, “Soldani’s Blenheim Commission and other Bronze Sculptures after the Antique”, in Festschrift Klaus Lankheit, Cologne, 1973, pp. 180-84.
C. Avery, Florentine Baroque Bronzes and Other Objects of Art, exh. cat. ,The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 1975, pp. 40-41.
C. Avery, “Soldani’s small bronze statuettes after ‘Old Master’ Sculptures in Florence”, in Kunst des Barock in der Toskana, Munich, 1976, pp. 165-72 (reprinted in C. Avery, Studies in European Sculpture, London, 1981, pp. 122-32).
F. Haskell & N. Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classic Sculpture 1500-1900, (Yale – 1982).
Various authors, Die Bronzen der Fürstlichen Kunstsammlung Liechtenstein, exh. cat., Liebieghaus, Museum alter Plastik, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt-am Main, 1987, pp. 228-33.
C. Avery, “Bronze statuettes by Soldani after ‘Old Master’ sculptures in the Uffizi Gallery and elsewhere in Florence”, in The Ian and Margaret Ross Collection: Baroque Sculpture and Medals, The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1988, pp. 41-45.
C. Avery, “Lord Burlington and the Florentine Baroque bronze sculptor Soldani: New Documentation on the Anglo-Florentine Art Trade in the Age of the Grand Tour”, in E. Corp (ed.), Lord Burlington - the Man and his Politics: Questions of Loyalty (Studies in British History, volume 48), Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter, 1998, pp. 27-49, figs. 2-15.
A. Darr, P. Barnet, A Boström et al, Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Detroit Institute of Arts, London/Detroit, 2002, II.
C. Avery, “The Duke of Marlborough as a Collector and Patron of Sculpture”, in Edward Chaney [ed.], The Evolution of English Collecting: The Reception of Italian Art in the Tudor & Stuart periods (Studies in British Art Vol. 12), New Haven/London, 2003, pp. 443 -51.
C. Avery, “Treasures for Blenheim’s Hero”, in Country Life, 22 July 2004, p. 48.
M. Leithe-Jasper and P. Wengraf, European Bronzes from the Quentin Collection, exh. cat., The Frick Collection, New York, 2004, pp. 262-77.
C. Avery, “Soldani’s mythological bronzes and his British clientèle”, in Sculpture Journal, XIV, 2005, pp. 8-29
[1] Mi ritrovo fatto dodici figurette di bronzo per un Gabinetto, alte mezzo braccio, le quali sono parte nude e parte vestite, e sono copiate esattamente dale statue piu celebri, che sieno in questa Citta …. Parendomi che possino esser cose per l‘A.V. gle le propongo per vedere se vole applicare, prima che io le propongo ad altri; il prezzo sara per l‘ultimo trenta piastre l’una per l’altra, e volendo restar servita, si degni per sua bonta di farmelo sapere, accio che io posso risolvere, dandole questo motive per contrassegno delle mie vive obbligazioni.
[2] Avery, 2005, pp. 8-29
[3] Avery, 1998, pp. 27-49, figs. 2-15
[4] Copies of two of his statuettes – though not of the present type - were indeed used to decorate an important English cabinet by John Channon: C. Avery, “The Pedestals, Frames, Mounts and Presentation of Massimiliano Soldani-Benzi's Bronze Statuettes and Reliefs”, in Furniture History, XXXI, 1995, pp. 1-16
Provenance
Julius Böhler Gallery, Starnberg (Germany)