Lot 450: AN ITALIAN BRONZE FIGURE OF A JESTER, ATTRIBUTED TO ORAZIO MOCHI (1571-1625), FIRST QUARTER 17TH CENTURY, FLORENCE

AN ITALIAN BRONZE FIGURE OF A JESTER, ATTRIBUTED TO ORAZIO MOCHI (1571-1625), FIRST QUARTER 17TH CENTURY, FLORENCE golden patina beneath reddish-brown lacquer, upon later wood base. height 7 1/16 in.; 17.9 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. 33

L. Camins, Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, San Francisco, 1988, no. 33, pp. 96-97
M. H. Schwartz (ed.), European Sculpture from the Abbott Guggenheim Collection, New York, 2008, no. 59, p. 122

Filippo Baldanucci records that Orazio Mochi was the creator of the stone group of "Saccomazzone" players in the Boboli gardens in Florence, which depicts two peasants in humble clothing struggling at the pastoral game in a scene reminiscent of contemporaneous genre painitngs. Numerous bronze reductions of that distinctive group are known, including one attributed to Gianfrancesco Susini in the collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein. Based upon stylistic comparison with those bronzes the present model is assumed to have originated with Mochi as well. A jester, perhaps a player in the commedia dell'arte, is shown with a grotesque expression, in tattered clothes with a costume hood. A version is in the Rijksmuseum, and another from the collection of Lord Clark of Saltwood is in the collection of Alexis Gregory, New York.

RELATED LITERATURE

C. Avery, "Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in the Collection of Alexis Gregory", Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin, Fall 1995, no. 41, pp. 68-69