Lot 403: AN ITALIAN BRONZE COVERED INKSTAND, CIRCLE OF GIUSEPPE DE LEVIS (1552-1611/14), EARLY 17TH CENTURY, VERONA

AN ITALIAN BRONZE COVERED INKSTAND, CIRCLE OF GIUSEPPE DE LEVIS (1552-1611/14), EARLY 17TH CENTURY, VERONA height 9 in.; 22.9 cm

San Francisco, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, 3 March-11 September 1988, cat. no. 20

L. Camins, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection (exh. cat.), M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, 1988, pp. 64-65, cat. no. 20

Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, March 23-24, 1973, lot 98

North Italian sculptors working in bronze such as Nicolò Roccatagliata, Andrea di Alessandro Bresciano, and Giuseppe de Levis often borrowed motifs from one another, making it difficult to distinguish the original inventors of specific designs. Giuseppe de Levis is known for bells, plaquettes, domestic decorations, and figures bearing his distinctive signature, including a pair of candelabra and matching inkstand formerly in the collection of Sir John Martin-Harvey (Avery, op. cit., p. 66, fig. 9) which closely relate to the present inkstand. Two other comparable examples with similar horse-head supports are in the Thyssen-Bornemiza collection and the Kestner-Museum, Hanover (Radcliffe, op. cit., no. 41, pp. 234-237 and p. 236 fig. 1).

RELATED LITERATURE

C. Avery, "Giuseppe de Levis of Verona: Bronze founder and sculptor of the late sixteenth century" in Studies in European Sculpture, London, 1981, pp. 45-78
A. Radcliffe, The Thyssen-Bornemiza Collection: Renaissance and Later Sculpture, London, 1992