Renaissance-style statuette group of Victory of Virtue over Vice

The bronze depicts a youthful nude subjugating an anthropomorphic creature with a canine face and the claws and furry long legs of a satyr. It entered The Met with an attribution to the Tuscan artist Pierino da Vinci, endorsed by Leo Planiscig, but of which Yvonne Hackenbroch was skeptical.[1] While Planiscig identified the prototype for the Untermyer group as the bronze Samson and the Philistines traditionally linked to Michelangelo (see cat. 98), Hackenbroch traced its source to another well-known sixteenth-century Florentine creation, the large marble Triumph of Virtue over Vice by the Perugian sculptor Vincenzo Danti.[2]

Our bronze does seem closer in spirit to Danti’s group in its compact composition and the oblique pose of the victor. The monstrous appearance of the defeated figure resonates as well with Valerio Cioli’s terracotta of the same subject, another nod to Danti.[3] The Untermyer and Cioli dimensions match, and the vanquished creature in both has a snakelike tail and fierce features. But neither the Pierino attribution nor the connection to Danti, or even to the Renaissance, is tenable. The bronze’s style suggests a much later time frame. Its high, earthy base and the creature’s physiognomy indicate familiarity with Rodin’s koiné, and certain technical aspects point to a very late cast as well.[4] The evident but free citation of Florentine models and the hellish appearance of the devilish creature lead to the conclusion that this work is more a d’après than a fraudulent imitation intended to be sold on the international market as a Renaissance bronze. Nonetheless, the sculpture soon acquired that identity, perhaps by way of an unscrupulous art dealer, even managing to deceive a connoisseur like Planiscig.
-TM

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. ESDA/OF; Untermyer 1962, p. 17, pl. 50.
2. Bargello, 3 S.
3. Bargello, 286 S; see Claudio Pizzorusso in Davis and Paolozzi Strozzi 2008, p. 304, cat. 3.
4. Radiographs show that this spatially complex group was cast in one piece with thin even walls and no porosity, suggesting the use of flexible molding materials more commonly used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The metal is a ternary alloy of copper, zinc, and tin, with very low levels of lead and no arsenic, antimony, or silver. R. Stone/TR, September 23, 2011.