18th Century and Earlier Nude Sculptures

Unknown Artist (Italy, early 17th century) Seated Faun Bronze on a marble base (later), 32 cm in height Provenance: Private collection This bronze depicts a faun, a mythological figure from ancient Rome often associated with nature and fertility, embodying both human and animal attributes. The faun is portrayed here in a dynamic posture, seated on a marble base, which, though added later, enhances the sculptural dimension of the piece. His muscular and tense body seems to capture a moment of jubilation or exuberant pleasure, as evidenced by his upturned face and open mouth in an ecstatic smile. This expressive gesture, along with the casual positioning of his raised arm behind his head, evokes the freedom and hedonism traditionally associated with these mythological creatures. The quality of the bronze craftsmanship is remarkable, particularly in the muscular details and the expressiveness of the face, signs of technical mastery typical of late Renaissance and early Baroque Italian sculpture. The faun's legs are muscular but also marked by hooves, emphasizing his hybrid nature, half-human and half-animal. This hybridity reflects an iconographic tradition in which fauns are often associated with debauchery and wild living, removed from human society. Seventeenth-century Italy, particularly Rome and Florence, was a hub of prolific artistic production, with artists such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Alessandro Algardi...

Bronze table sculpture - Spinario (copy from the antique) - Italy, late 19th century. 11 x 14 x h 19 cm. Entirely in chiseled bronze. - The work is a late nineteenth-century copy ...

18th Century Continental School Bronze Sculpture of Aphrodite, c. 18th Century 25-3/4 in. h. x 11 in. w. x 9 in. d., without Base 1-1/4...

Late 18th Century Bronze Sculpture after the Farnese Hercules Grand Tour bronze with a fine encrusted patination on a later wooden base 16 in. h., overall 12.5 in. h., bronze 3.5 in...

Apollo and Dafne is an original old master sculpture realized between 1712-1719. Original Maissen porcelain (first period). Small sculptural group ...

Monumental and rare finely carved 18' century mythological subject sculpture of Apollo with flowers. Very good condition from an estate of Veneto. We can deliver in a wooden cases

This vigorous terracotta was inspired by a fresco created by Annibale Carracci to decorate the ceiling of the Camerino Farnese, a room on the ground ...

Apollo and Dafne is an original old master sculpture realized beetween 1712-1719. Original Maissen porcelain (first period). Small sculptural group...

This marble medallion shows strong similarities to Etienne Le Hongre’s reception piece at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, which is now kept in the Notre-Dame Church in Versailles. While the suppleness of this sculpture evokes the Italian workshops frequented by Le Hongre before his arrival in Paris, the use of marble (and not terracotta, as was generally the case for the modelli) indicates that it is an independent artwork. It has not been possible, however, to determine whether this marble is an early work by Etienne Le Hongre, or a later interpretation of his reception piece, executed in a reduced format, by one of the Academy's students. 1. Etienne Le Hongre Etienne Le Hongre was admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1653, after his apprenticeship in the workshop of the sculptor Jacques Sarazin (1592 - 1660), and a three-year sojourn in Italy. He was finally admitted to the Academy in 1667 after the presentation of a marble high-relief featuring Saint Mary Magdalene...

PROVENANCE Georges Manolakos, 10 rue Buffault, Paris Charles Gillot (1853-1903), Paris, acquired from the above on October 5th, 1899 Christie's, Paris, Ancienne Collection Charles Gillot (1853-1903), March 5th, 2008, no. 150, illus. this lovely figure of Aphrodite is represented standing, naked, wearing a tiara, with her hair arranged in long curls, tied in a chignon and surmounted by a diadem. She is holding her girdle in her right hand. The statuette is mounted on a quadrangular Verde delle Alpi marble base, typical of late 19th/early 20th century. Listed in Charles Gillot's account book in 1899 as acquired n Paris from Georges Manolakas, a Greek dealer, for 800 Franks. Charles Gillot, one of the most renowned French collectors, was the son of the engraver Firmin Gillot, inventor of paniconography, more widely known as “gillotage”, opening the first French photoengraving workshop in 1876. His collection was mostly dispersed after his death in 1903, partly donated to the Musée du Louvre and then transferred to the Musée Guimet...

Burnished bronze table sculpture on plexiglass base. "Cherub". Italy, 16th century.

The sculptor has portrayed the moment just before the young girl's bath, as she puts her foot tentatively forward to test the temperature of the water. This graceful gesture was inspired by the Bather, painted in 1725 by François Lemoyne (author of large decorative works such as the ceiling of the Hercules Salon at Versailles), and made popular by engravings. Falconet captures the moment when a young girl becomes a woman, thereby defining a new feminine aesthetic - long, slender body, narrow hips, sloping shoulders, and small breasts - which was to impregnate his future work and influence his contemporaries. The girl's head is small and her oval face forms a triangle. Her hairstyle was inspired by antiquity: smooth on top, with a central parting. It appealed to Mme du Barry, mistress of Louis XV, who wears the same style in the portrait sculpted by Augustin Pajou in 1772. The bather is entirely naked, but not immodest. The purity of line, the reserved pose (leaning slightly forward to extend her foot), the graceful position of the arms, and the candid face with lowered eyelids, avoid all vulgarity and keep the spectator at a certain distance. Yet the statuette is neither cold nor inert. The slightly jutting hip counterbalances the sideways swing of the arms in a dancing movement. And above all, Falconet imparted an impression of living flesh to his sculpture, with the soft shine of the marble suggesting the grain and shiver of the skin. Étienne Maurice Falconet (1 December 1716 – 24 January 1791) was a French baroque, rococo and neoclassical sculptor, best-known for his equestrian statue of Peter the Great, the Bronze Horseman (1782), in St. Petersburg, Russia, and for the small statues he produced in series for the Royal Sévres Porcelain Manufactory. Falconet was born to a poor family in Paris. He was at first apprenticed to a carpenter, but some of his clay figures, with the making of which he occupied his leisure hours, attracted the notice of the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, who made him his pupil. One of his most successful early sculptures was of Milo of Croton...