Roebuck attacked by hound
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
In 1784, the sculptor-restorer Francesco Antonio Franzoni incorporated ancient fragments into the marble group of this composition, which he assembled for Pope Pius VI. It is among the peculiar delights of the Vatican Museums’ Sala degli Animali, where it is paired with Franzoni’s similarly reconstructed Stag Attacked by a Hound.[1] Bronze reductions ensued in large numbers. Alvar González-Palacios assigned a cast of the Stag group to the prolific founder Francesco Righetti, but neither it nor the Roebuck model occurs in the price lists of Righetti or of his contemporary Giovanni Zoffoli.[2] The Stag group is glossier in appearance than the present one, whose master interested himself in providing the beasts with furry hides in place of the Vatican marble’s matte surfaces.[3] The surface is patinated a rich, dark brown. The roebuck’s right hind leg was broken just below the joint and repaired with solder. -JDD Footnotes (For key to shortened references see bibliography in Allen, Italian Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022.) 1. González-Palacios 2013, nos. 169, 171. 2. Ibid., p. 35, fig. 16. The cast was then in the collection of Jacques Petit-Horry, Paris. For the price lists, see Haskell and Penny 1981, appendix. 3. Yet another foundry produced variations on the pelts in a pair sold at Sotheby’s, London, April 12, 1990, lot 126.
European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.