Peruvian, Ayacucho School

The Three Magi

ca. 1800

Provenance: Private Collection, Spain. This intriguing and enigmatic sculpture depicts the head of a young African man emerging from a circular opening ...

Ferdinand Barbedienne (Saint-Martin-de-Fresnay 1810 – 1892 Paris) after Lorenzo Ghiberti (Florence, 1378 – 1455) Signed at the lower right of the principal relief: F. BARBEDIENNE Provenance: Private Collection, USA. Barbedienne’s “Gates of Paradise” reliefs are one of the triumphs of nineteenth-century bronze casting and patination. The nine panels that comprise our example are half-size reductions of the famous originals by Lorenzo Ghiberti, made for the Baptistery of Florence and now housed in the Museo del Opera del Duomo. Mounted in an impressive, mullioned frame surround, our work is an exceptional exemplar of the Renaissance Revival, the broadly influential style and movement that infused architecture, design, and artistic culture in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The central scene, The Story of Joseph, is perhaps the most celebrated of the entire series depicting as it does seven episodes from the Biblical narrative integrated into a single composition: Joseph cast by his brethren into the well, Joseph sold to the merchants, the merchants delivering Joseph to the pharaoh, Joseph interpreting the pharaoh’s dream, the pharaoh paying him honor, Jacob sending his sons to Egypt, and Joseph recognizes his brothers and returns home. The surrounding reliefs—two vertical figures in niches, two recumbent figures, and four portrait heads in roundels—are as well faithful reductions of Ghiberti’s original bronzes on other parts of the doors. The maker of these casts was the renowned 19th-century French fondeur Ferdinand Barbedienne. Gary Radke has recently written of this great enterprise: “The Parisian bronze caster Ferdinand Barbedienne began making half-sized copies of ancient and Renaissance sculpture in the 1830s. His firm benefitted enormously from the collaboration of Achille Collas, whom Meredith Shedd has shown was one of numerous pioneers in the mechanical reproduction of sculpture. Their competitors largely devoted themselves to reproducing relief sculpture, but Collas devised a process for creating fully three-dimensional copies. A tracing needle, powered by a treadle, moved over the surface of a full-sized plaster cast or bronze of the original and triggered a complementary action in a cutting stylus set over a soft plaster blank…He signed an exclusive contract with Barbedienne on November 29, 1838, and won medals for his inventions in 1839 and 1844. Barbedienne’s half-sized copies of the Gates of Paradise were famous not only for their fidelity to the original, but also for the way their gilding…suggested the glimmering surface that was hidden under centuries of dirt. Some critics even saw Collas’s and Barbedienne’s work as ‘philanthropic, an exemplary adaptation of industry to the requirements of art, the artist, the workers, and the public alike.’ At 25,000 francs, Collas’s and Barbedienne’s reduction of the Gates of Paradise was singularly more expensive than any other item for sale in their shop. All the reliefs, individual statuettes, and busts were cast separately and could be purchased either by the piece or as an ensemble. Fittingly, Barbedienne’s accomplishment earned him the Grand Prix at the 1878 Paris Exposition Universelle, along with numerous other medals.” Three complete examples of the Barbedienne-Ghiberti doors are known. One, first installed in a chapel in the Villa Demidoff of San Donato near Pratolino, was later acquired by William Vanderbilt...

Signed, dated, and inscribed on the verso: Malvina Hoffman/ Den Pasar/ “Nipolog”-/ © 1932/ Bali Provenance: The artist; her estate. Literature: Mal...

Provenance: James Byrnes, Los Angeles (1917-2011) Giusto Le Court was born Josse or Justus de Corte in the Flemish city of Ypres. His father Jean was a sculptor and presumably his earliest training was with him before he entered the studio of Cornelis van Mildert. The young artist was clearly influenced by the dominant Flemish sculptor of the time, Artus Quellinus the Elder, with whom he may have worked on the decoration of the Amsterdam City Hall. Following the lead of many northern artists he travelled to Rome, perhaps more than once, before settling in Venice around 1655. It was there, as one of a colony of expatriate artists, that he made his name as a sculptor. One of his first Venetian commissions was for the monument to Alvise Mocenigo in the Church of San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti, where Le Court sculpted the marble figures of Strength and Justice. He also collaborated with the celebrated architect Baldassare Longhena, most famously for the high altar of Santa Maria della Salute, where he carved the multi-figured altarpiece depicting the Queen of Heaven Expelling the Plague. The present marble sculpture depicts the infant Saint John the Baptist, reclining, wearing his traditional hair-shirt, embracing a lamb, and holding the bottom of his attribute, a reed cross. Attached to his shirt is a baptismal cup, with which he would become associated later in his life. Veneration of the infant Saint John the Baptist was prevalent throughout Italy and images of the saint in childhood—often called “Giovannino,” or little John...

Wild Running Horse Three-Dimensional Painting on Wood 40H X 30" W 2019 in Los Angeles Collaborative Artwork - Irena Orlov-Zeev Orlov SPECIFICATIONS: Combines Painting and Sculptur...

For Nicolas Bourriaud, the flea market is a place where “past production is recycled and switches direction” and where “an object is given a new idea.” On the stalls of the flea mar...

A substantial and dramatic Art Deco figure of a horse, hand-carved in rose-ochre alabaster. Unsigned, American School circa 1930.

After WILLIAM ADOLPHE BOUGUEREAU French, (1825–1905) Cupid With Butterfly H 34 in. x W 16 in. x D 16 in.