BUST OF MENELAUS OR AJAX (PASQUIN GROUP). BRONZE. 20TH CENTURY.
Antiques -
Reference: ZF1236
Bust of Menelaus or Ajax (Pasquino Group). Bronze. 20th century. Bust made of bronze showing a bearded man, dressed in a cloak gathered with a circular brooch and with a strip on the other shoulder, and wearing a helmet decorated with reliefs. The work is inspired by a highly prized sculpture known as the Pasquino Group (or Menelaus Carrying the Body of Patroclus or Ajax Carrying the Body of Achilles), made in marble copying a Hellenistic bronze and dated to around 200-150 BC. About fifteen Roman marble copies are known of it, many of which were “intervened” (or restored) during the 16th and 17th centuries. The earliest of these copies were documented for the first time in Rome in 1500. Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, bought an ancient marble fragment of an armoured male bust supporting a dying companion, brought it to Florence (inventoried in 1574) and Ferdinando II commissioned its “restoration” (or rather intervention) to Lodovico Salvetti based on a model by Pietro Tacca, giving rise to the so-called “Menelaus Holding the Body of Patroclus” in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence (Italy). In 1771, Anton Raphael Mengs (Aussig, Bohemia, 12 March 1728 – Rome, 29 June 1779) took moulds of the parts he considered ancient (original) of this group and of the one in the Palazzo Pitti (a gift from Paolo Antonino Soderini in 1570), and assembled them into a plaster model that he intended to be more faithful to the Roman original. After a series of changes, it was rebuilt in 1838 and exhibited in the Loggia dei Lanzi in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence. This work by Mengs is cited to compare this bust with others inspired by those made by the neoclassical artist: Unknown creator, Head of Ajax from the Palazzo Pitti, c. 1770. Plaster cast. Dresden, Skulpturensammlung (ASN 1932); Head of Menelaus, Pushkin Museum, Moscow, etc. It should also be noted that many of these (for example, those mentioned in Dresden) are casts of a bust from the period of Hadrian of a head of Achilles originally Hellenistic which is in the Vatican Museums in Rome (inv. 694) and is also considered part of the Pasquino Group. We must emphasize the comparison of this bronze bust with this marble sculpture. Weight: 110 kg.
· Size: 82x55x116 cms.
3.500 €
