Lot 160: A BRONZE ÉCORCHE FIGURE OF A MAN, BY WILLEM VAN TETRODE (DELFT 1525 -1580 DELFT), THE MODEL ROME OR FLORENCE, CIRCA 1562-1567

the figure with exaggerated musculature, his weight on his left leg, his head thrown back, his torso twisting to the left, with elegantly upswept left arm, his right arm slightly raised by his side and originally holding an object, olive-brown patina beneath dark brown varnish and remainders of reddish-gold translucent lacquer, upon later wood stand. Some restorations.

RELATED LITERATURE
Hamburg Museum for Kunst und Gewerbe, Sechs Sammler Stellen Aus (exh. cat.), 7 April to 11 June 1961, p. 31, no. 69.

Shelley E. Zuraw, Maria Giulia Barberini, et. al., Masterpieces of teh Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture from the Palazzo Venezia, Rome (exh. cat.), Georgia Museum of Art, 1996, pp. 78 and 79, no. 20.

M. Kemp, Spectacular Bodies: the art and Science of the human body from Leonardo to now (exh. cat. ), London, Hayward Gallery, 2000, p. 81, cat. no. 284.

S. H. Goddard and J. A. Ganz, Goltzius and the Third Dimension (exh. cat.), Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, January 19-March 16, 2002.

Fritz Scholten, Willem van Tetrode, Sculptor (c. 1525-1580) (exh.cat.), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and the Frick Collection, New York, 2003, pp. 125-126, cat. no. 31, figs. 35, 43, and 44.

height of figure 17 1/16 in.; 43.7cm.

PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF A EUROPEAN GENTLEMAN

This magnificent bronze figure, displaying a man falling backwards in an almost balletic pose and with vigorously modelled and chased musculature, is apparently one of only two known early bronze versions of Tetrode's Écorché . The model was executed in either Rome or Florence during Tetrode's years there.

The recent exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and the Frick Collection, New York on Tetrode included a very similar and fine Écorché bronze belonging to the Hearn Family Trust. Scholten, in his exhibition catalogue (op. cit. no 31), describes that bronze as probably representing a wounded warrior or a flayed man. While the body has no skin, "clearly showing the figure's muscles and sinews", a semblance of an athletic male body still exists. A further, nearly identical bronze incorporating a swathe of drapery hanging from his right arm and used as a support, is in the Palazzo Venezia, Rome (Zuraw op.cit, no. 20) and catalogued as "Flemish late 17th/early 18th century".

Anatomy was a key element in the curriculum for the young artist of the early Renaissance and onward. Students would use bodies for dissection, picture books and three-dimensional models of flayed figures (or écorchés) to develop their draughting skills. Tetrode, during his years in Italy (c.1548-67), when he worked with Cellini and other leading Roman and Florentine sculptors, mastered his anatomical studies creating a variety of bronzes of heroic men with exaggerated musculature. See Tetrode's Hercules Pomarius, for example, in Scholten, op. cit., figs. 20-24. These finished bronzes were made for both study and to be admired as display pieces, valued for their visual qualities.

Tetrode's Écorché inspired Netherlandish artists of the 17th century, including Goltzius, Cornelius Saftleven, Michiel van Musschler and Job Berkheyde. Years later, Rubens was also inspired to draw this Écorché from three views (Scholten, op. cit., fig. 92).

Willem van Tetrode was the first Northern sculptor to bring the Italian classical style to the Netherlands. Over half of his career was spent in Italy, gaining employment from the pivotal Italian sculptors of the period. In Florence, his abilities were recognized by Benvenuto Cellini, who employed the young Dutch man as a marble carver between 1548 and 1551. Tetrode went on to carve the ornate marble base for Cellini's bronze Perseus (in the Piazza della Signoria, Florence). He then took part in the restoration of the antique torso that was to be transformed into a Ganymede (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence), winning Cellini greater fame. Tetrode then travelled to Rome where he worked as a restorer of classical marble statues in the shop of Guglielmo della Porta, sculptor to the Farnese family.

In around 1559-60, he executed a commission for the cabinet of Nicolò Orsini, Conte de Pitigliano, making a series of small-scale bronze copies of famous antique sculptures. At that time, he further explored his interest in Hellenistic classicism which helped to articulate a lasting passion for the expressive possibilities of the muscular nude.

By 1567, Teterode returned to Delft, taking with him a knowledge of both Antique and Italian Renaissance sculpture, new to his Northern contemporaries. While he gained major commissions in the ensuing years, including work for Salentin von Isenburg, Archbishop of Cologne, none of his public religious commissions remain. All were destroyed by the Dutch Iconoclastic outbreaks of 1573.