Lot 482: FRANCESCO BERTOS

INTELLECT AND WISDOM
KINDNESS AND GRATITUDE
each inscribed on the top of the base: OPUS F[reversed] BERTOS, one with: INGENIVM NVNQVAM ET SAPIENSIA DEFITCIVNT on a cartouche on socle, the other with: BENEFICIVM VTIQVE ET GRATITVDO VIVVNT.

heights 26 1/2 in., 25 5/8 in.; 67.3 cm, 65.1 cm

a pair, bronze on bronze-mounted marble bases

<P>first half 18th century</P>

Fogelman and Fusco 2002, pp. 293-299, no. 37 (illus.); London 1994; Avery 2008, cat. nos. 85 and 86 (illus.)

Christie's London, April 24, 1986, lot 21; Heim Gallery, London

The present pair of allegorical bronzes was once part of a set, with two others entitled Stupidity and Fortune and Industry and Virtue now in the J. Paul Getty Museum. The four share the same original waisted, four-sided, bronze mounted socles which bear the artist's signature on the tops and Latin mottos inscribed in cartouches around the bottoms. Although the attributes are somewhat ambigious (as is not uncommon in Bertos's work), the mottos incorporate the virtues that the figures are intended to personify: "Kindness and Gratitude assuredly live" and "Intelligence and Wisdom never fail". The pose of the male figure holding the nude female aloft is a familiar motif in Bertos's allegorical groups and certainly derives from Giambologna's Rape of the Sabines. The poses of the present pair are nearly identical, and share the same configuration with the Getty's Industry and Virtue. Another pair exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1994 (Avery 2008, op. cit., nos. 87-88) shares the composition, as does a pair sold at Sotheby's London in 1956 (Avery 2008, op. cit., nos. 89-90); neither of those pairs shares the same style of base with the Sackler and Getty pairs. Although Wengraf suggests that these were all part of the same group, it is likely that the other two pairs come from a similar but distinct set.