Cupid

ca. 1580

Flemish, active Italy, 1529–1608

Flemish, 1548-1615

The corkscrew form of this robust figure invites the viewer to walk around it and see it from all angles. This serpentine construction embodied the thinking of Michelangelo and other sixteenth-century theorists who believed that
"a figure has its highest grace and eloquence when it is seen in movement."

Marble

29 x 12 x 11 in. (30.48 x 27.94 cm)

Samuel H. Kress Collection

61.177

Provenance: Italo Nuñez, Rome; L. Pollack, Rome; Avvocatto Ernesto Bertollo, Genoa, possibly until 1951; His Excellency G.E. Auriti, Italian Ambassador in Vienna, Vienna and Rome; [Jacques Seligmann and Co., New York]; purchased from gallery by Samuel H. Kress collection, New York, February 1952; gift from Kress Foundation to the Seattle Art Museum, since 1952, accessioned 1961

Now on view at the Seattle Art Museum

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Wash., Seattle Art Museum, Italian Art: Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952. Text by William Suida and Sherman Lee. Cat. no. 19, pp. 8, 20.

Published ReferencesMuentz, Eugene. Histoire de l'art pendant la Renaissance. 3 vols. Paris: 1889-1895; p. 426, no. 1.

Suida, William and Richard Fuller. European Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. Seattle, Wash.: Seattle Art Museum, 1954; p. 80, reproduced p. 81 (with wings).

Seligman, Germain. Merchants of Art: 1880-1960; Eighty Years of Professional Collecting. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1961-1962; reproduced pl. 114.

Eisler, Colin. "Review: Merchants of Art: 1880-1960; Eighty Years of Professional Collecting." The Art Bulletin 46, no. 1 (Mar. 1964): p. 117

De Francqueville, Robert. Pierre de Francqueville: sculptour des Medicis et du roi Henry IV (1548-1615). Paris: Editions a. et J. Picard et cie, 1968; p. 71, reproduced fig. 35.

Middeldorf, Ulrich. Sculptures from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: European Schools XIV-XIX Century. London, England: Phaidon Press for the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1976; p. 70-75, reproduced no. 124 (multiple views), fig. 122, 123, 124.

Ishikawa, Chiyo. The Samuel H. Kress Collection at the Seattle Art Museum. Seattle, Wash.: Seattle Art Museum, 1997; pp. 57-59, reproduced fig. 36.

Donatella Pegazzano. “Il Giardino Bracci a Rovezzano: precisazione e agguinte sculture di Pietro Francavilla.” Paragone 50, no. 959 (1999): p. 74-75.

Zikos, Dimitrios. "Giambologna's Land, House, and Workshops in Florence." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 46, no. 2/3 (2002): pp. 357-408, reproduced pp. 365 (fig. 7, 9), 372 (figs. 14, 15).

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