Highlights: Patricia Wengraf on Bacchus wearing a Silenus mask
From Patricia Wengraf
Adriaen de Vries, Bacchus Wearing a Silenus Mask, cast ca. 1578–80. Bronze, 35 1/4 × 13 inches (89.5 × 33 cm). Photo: Maggie Nimkin Photography
This powerful work, a star of The Hill Collection, is one of the most intriguing Renaissance bronzes known to scholars. When first recorded in 1582, it was described as in the garden of Antonio Londonio, a magistrate of Spanish origin who lived in Milan, then under Spanish rule. In 1602, Count Pirro Visconti purchased it from Antonio’s dissolute son Carlo for his villa, later known as Villa Litta, in Lainate, near Milan. It remained there until about 1926, when it was acquired by August von Schorlemer-Lieser for his castle, Schloss Lieser. A lead copy, taken from the original, still survives at the Villa Litta, but no other bronze cast is known. Bacchus Wearing a Silenus Mask originally functioned as a fountain. Water streamed from an inverted umbrella-shaped structure on his head, over the grapes, as from a spout at the side of the bucket.
Bacchus wears the theatrical mask of Silenus in one of his guises as lord of revels and symbolic leader of the Accademiadel Blenio, a group of artists and intellectuals formed in sixteenth-century Milan. The Accademia was not only devoted to social pleasures; its members also had serious ideas, for instance that art should exist independently from worldly and ecclesiastical influences. These remarkably modern views made the Accademia not only nonconformist, but almost subversive; it held its meetings in secret.
The extraordinary quality of the modeling combined with the creative interpretation of this singular subject have led to an attribution to a young Adriaen de Vries. The Flemish artist is recorded as having been in Milan between March 1586 and February 1588, working with the Italian sculptor Pompeo Leoni in his workshop and preparing over-life-size models from Pompeo’s designs for cast bronzes commissioned by Philip II of Spain for the Escorial’s high altar. The vibrant, undulating surface of Bacchus Wearing a Silenus Mask echoes the fluid consistency of the wax model from which it was cast, and can be compared to autograph works by de Vries. The bronze also reaffirms stylistic evidence suggesting that de Vries may previously have worked in the Leoni workshop, Milan, circa 1580, before joining his fellow countryman Giambologna in Florence in 1581. The Hill Bacchus may prove to be the first work made by de Vries in Milan, possibly cast with the involvement of Andrea Pellizzone, who subsequently claimed in a trial that he had both created and cast the bronze himself. Given the poor quality of Pellizzone’s known works, this is improbable, but it highlights interesting questions of artistic rivalry in sixteenth-century Milan.
References
Kryza-Gersch, Claudia. “Bacchic Man: Lomazzo Personifying the Accademia della Val di Blenio.” In Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from The Hill Collection, edited by Patricia Wengraf, 248–61. New York: Frick Collection, 2014.
This powerful work, a star of The Hill Collection, is one of the most intriguing Renaissance bronzes known to scholars. When first recorded in 1582, it was described as in the garden of Antonio Londonio, a magistrate of Spanish origin who lived in Milan, then under Spanish rule. In 1602, Count Pirro Visconti purchased it from Antonio’s dissolute son Carlo for his villa, later known as Villa Litta, in Lainate, near Milan. It remained there until about 1926, when it was acquired by August von Schorlemer-Lieser for his castle, Schloss Lieser. A lead copy, taken from the original, still survives at the Villa Litta, but no other bronze cast is known. Bacchus Wearing a Silenus Mask originally functioned as a fountain. Water streamed from an inverted umbrella-shaped structure on his head, over the grapes, as from a spout at the side of the bucket.
Bacchus wears the theatrical mask of Silenus in one of his guises as lord of revels and symbolic leader of the Accademia del Blenio, a group of artists and intellectuals formed in sixteenth-century Milan. The Accademia was not only devoted to social pleasures; its members also had serious ideas, for instance that art should exist independently from worldly and ecclesiastical influences. These remarkably modern views made the Accademia not only nonconformist, but almost subversive; it held its meetings in secret.
The extraordinary quality of the modeling combined with the creative interpretation of this singular subject have led to an attribution to a young Adriaen de Vries. The Flemish artist is recorded as having been in Milan between March 1586 and February 1588, working with the Italian sculptor Pompeo Leoni in his workshop and preparing over-life-size models from Pompeo’s designs for cast bronzes commissioned by Philip II of Spain for the Escorial’s high altar. The vibrant, undulating surface of Bacchus Wearing a Silenus Mask echoes the fluid consistency of the wax model from which it was cast, and can be compared to autograph works by de Vries. The bronze also reaffirms stylistic evidence suggesting that de Vries may previously have worked in the Leoni workshop, Milan, circa 1580, before joining his fellow countryman Giambologna in Florence in 1581. The Hill Bacchus may prove to be the first work made by de Vries in Milan, possibly cast with the involvement of Andrea Pellizzone, who subsequently claimed in a trial that he had both created and cast the bronze himself. Given the poor quality of Pellizzone’s known works, this is improbable, but it highlights interesting questions of artistic rivalry in sixteenth-century Milan.
References
Kryza-Gersch, Claudia. “Bacchic Man: Lomazzo Personifying the Accademia della Val di Blenio.” In Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from The Hill Collection, edited by Patricia Wengraf, 248–61. New York: Frick Collection, 2014.
Wengraf, Patricia. “Bacchus Wearing a Silenus Mask.” Burlington Magazine 153, no. 1294 (January 2011): 13–21.