£700,000 - £1,000,000
€800,000 - €1,100,000
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Circa 2nd Century A.D., after a Hellenistic original dating to the 2nd-1st Century B.C.
71cm high incl. integral base, base 42.5cm wide max.
Footnotes
Provenance:
Recorded as being with Stefano Bardini (1836-1922), Florence, circa 1893.
Purchased from Bardini for 15,000 Francs by William Waldorf Astor, later Viscount Astor of Hever (1848-1919), in the early 1900s (recorded in a red purchase ledger pre-1905); and thence by descent to John Jacob Astor (b.1946), 3rd Baron Astor of Hever.
Acquired from the Astor family by Broadland Properties in 1983, when Hever Castle moved into their ownership.
Weller King at Hever Castle, Sale of Furniture, Oriental Carpets, Tapestry, Architectural Items etc., 9 November 1999, lot 76.
London art market.
Anonymous sale; Bonhams, London, 21 April 2005, lot 225.
Private collection, UK, acquired from the above sale.
Published:
H. Brunn & F. Bruckmann (P. Arndt and G. Lippold), Denkmäler griechischer und römischer Skulptur, texte und register zu den tafeln 701-750, Munich, 1932, pl. 732, no. 3, abb. 7 (recorded as 'formerly with Bardini, Florence').
G. Astor, Statuary and Sculpture at Hever, Ipswich, 1969, p.3, no.22 (drawing, recording the group as being displayed along the Pompeian wall of the formal gardens).
G. Capecchi (trans. M. Rocke), The Historical Photographic Archive of Stefano Bardini: Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art, Florence, 1993, p.38, no.64, pl.64.
A. Stähli, Die Verweigerung der Lüste: Erotische Gruppen in der Antiken Plastik, Berlin, 1999, cover image, pp.363-4, no.3.3, pl.109.
Arachne database no. 1067464.
From Bardini to Astor
It is not known from whom Stefano Bardini (1836-1922) acquired this marble group, though the restorations could indicate a Florentine provenance. Stefano Bardini was an internationally renowned antiquarian, art connoisseur and an unusually sensitive photographer, who established his prestigious emporium in the Palazzo of the Piazza de' Mozzi complex, Florence, but also had offices in London and Paris. He mainly worked as an antique dealer between 1870-1920. Among Bardini's clients were the directors of the major European and American museums, which included the Louvre, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and the Metropolitan Museum as well as the Kaiser Friedrich Museum of Berlin whose director, Wilhelm von Bode, at one time noted that "without doubt....he was the most important antique dealer that Italy has ever had". Many prominent private collectors acquired important pieces from Bardini, including J. Pierpont Morgan, Prince J. Liechtenstein, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Barons Herzog and Figdor, the Vanderbilts, Madame Rothschild, and William Waldorf Astor, who spent around $107,000 on sculptures from Bardini.
Bardini bequeathed his Palazzo and its contents to the city of Florence, "in order to demonstrate the cult that I have always nourished for the artistic glory of Florence and the affection which binds me to this city" (10 September 1922). His bequest founded the Museo Bardini in 1923, which was extensively re-modelled in 1975-1976. During these renovations, in a small attic room, a chest containing hundreds of photographic plates were discovered, dating to the final years of the 19th Century. The old plates formed the private photographic archive of Bardini, which had been produced in his private laboratory by his assistants and by Bardini himself. Gabriella Capecchi's The Historical Photographic Archive of Stefano Bardini; Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art listed above forms the first of twelve volumes of the photographic archive documenting thousands of Works of Art, from Ancient to Romanesque sculpture, 20th Century arms, medals, bronzes, furniture, musical instruments and many other artworks, including the present lot.
William Waldorf Astor, born in New York and the only son of John Jacob Astor III, made his considerable fortune trading in furs. He began collecting antiquities when he was American Minister in Rome (1882-85), before emigrating to England and becoming a British subject in 1899, and later being invested as Baron Astor of Hever in 1916, and Viscount Astor of Castle in 1917. In July 1903, he bought the neglected Hever Castle in Kent from Edmund Meade Waldo. In the 16th Century, Hever Castle had been home to two of Henry VIII's wives: Anne Boleyn, who spent her childhood there, and Anne of Cleves, who received the Castle as part of her divorce settlement. Astor lavished his wealth on the restoration of Hever, restoring it to the splendour of its Tudor days, and creating magnificent gardens, which included a formal garden for the sculptures he had brought from Italy in 1905-6. In about 1907 this group was installed on the Pompeian Wall by the side of the lake in the Italian Gardens, which contained fountains, cascades and grottoes.
Roman Erotic Groups: Satyrs Pursuing Nymphs
This marble symplegma (an artistic depiction of explicit sexual activity) is one of only three known almost complete surviving examples of the type, alongside that in the Musei Capitolini in Rome (inv.-Nr. 1729), and the Townley group in the British Museum, London (discovered by Domenico de Angelis close to Tivoli, and restored by Sposino, acc. no. GR.1658). Margarete Bieber refers to seven surviving copies of the type in her 1955 work The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age (p. 147), but the remaining examples are merely fragments.
The Capitoline and Townley groups provide striking comparables, with only minimal differences between these compositions and the Hever group. The most notable difference is the position of the heads of both the nymph and satyr of the Hever example, but as these are a later restoration they likely do not reflect the original positioning. Moreover, the tendrils on the shoulders of the satyr suggest that the satyr head of the Hever group was executed in the same manner as the Capitoline and Townley groups. The expressions on the faces of the participants of these two other groups widen the possible interpretation of the scene at play. In the Hever group, the heads depict the nymph as anguished, almost frowning, and possibly, therefore, unwilling to accept the embrace of the excited satyr, while the satyr gazes upwards past the nymph's face. In the Townley example, the (restored) head of the nymph is looking back at the satyr with an amused, almost smiling expression, while the satyrs of the Capitoline and Townley examples are described by Bieber as 'half gay, half grievous' (ibid.), and certainly appear to be more vivacious than the Hever example. Bert Smith describes how 'pose and style convert rape into play. The satyr's seated position is hardly effective, hardly 'serious', and he is made unthreatening by extreme youth and playful expression' (Hellenistic Sculpture, A Handbook, London, 1991, p. 130). Using the comparables to deepen our understanding of the scene, it is apparent that the Hever group should be understood as being imbued with a cheeky playfulness, capturing a boisterous moment of erotic excitement between two energetic characters.
The subject of the amorous tussle between nymph and satyr was popularised during the late Hellenistic period, with the nymph being portrayed with varying degrees of reluctance. Jenkins, in relation to the Townley group, comments that 'midway between human and animal, with the ears and tail of a horse or goat, satyrs could behave in ways that transgressed the norms; so too nymphs, as mythical young women associated with nature, were conceived as legitimate outlets of pornographic fantasy' (The Greek Body, Los Angeles, 2009, p.92). The Roman examples of this type of group impressively capture the vivacity of the genre, as well as the striking contrast between masculine muscularity and feminine softness: indeed, Townley recorded his group as 'A Group of a Faun struggling with a Nymph...(a) display of exerted muscles, and graceful female shapes, in both which points the sculptor has shown great art and knowledge in the execution of this most spirited composition' (The first Townley inventory; statues 7). Smith comments that the pose of the nymph recalls the Crouching Aphrodite type (bid.). Ridgway notes that 'these "genre" compositions aim at creating a magical natural world inhabited by Dionysiac/Aphrodisiac creatures meant...for a Roman clientele', and suggests they were intended for adornment of a private home, being 'most appropriate in the luxurious gardens of Roman villas like that of Poppaea at Oplontis' (where a related group of a nymph and satyr was discovered in 1977; B.S. Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture II, the Styles of ca. 200-100 B.C., Madison, 2000, p. 288).
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