Seated satyr with a shell

Andrea Briosco, called Riccio

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The object in the satyr’s left hand, possibly s moneybag, is of later facture. Otherwise, the bronze is unusually crisply chased and an altogether superior product of the Riccio workshop. Its details, especially the hair, are more incisive than those of the seated satyr with inkwell, shell, and candlestick in the Frick Collection, New York, which bears the arms of the Paduan Capodivacca family, and much more so than related bronzes in Berlin-Dahlem and in the Louvre. A good variant was in the Chichester-Constable collection. Although the alert poses greatly resemble each other, notably in the gracile grossing of the hooves, it is worth stressing that the composition of each member of this group was completely reworked, as was standard practice in the Riccio workshop.

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.

Metropolitan Museum of Art