Neptune seated on a marine monster and blowing a conch shell

This small bronze entered The Met in 1926 as part of a group of four objects given by Ogden Mills. The modest group was one of a series that Mills gifted to the museum from 1924 to his death in 1929. Acknowledging receipt of the group, curator Joseph Breck wrote to Mills, “I particularly like the box and the amusing little statuette of Neptune.”[1] The acquisition paperwork described it as a “Neptune seated on a marine monster and blowing a conch shell. Venetian, about 1500.”[2] By the 1940s, due to its rough-hewn aesthetic and marine imagery, the work had gained an attribution to Severo da Ravenna.[3]

Neptune’s posture—upright, with arm raised—shows a debt to not only Mannerist compositions like Giambologna’s Triton (cat. 116), but later conceits like Bernini’s Triton in Piazza Barberini, Rome. Rather than being a product of Venice around 1500, the statuette likely dates no earlier than 1630. Richard Stone’s technical study of the object has yielded further information that clarifies its confusing facture and design. Stone uncovered a chemically induced original “friable layer of green which is clearly intended to look like an archaeological patina” underneath a later black varnish. Based on his findings, Stone considered this statuette “a diligent cinquecento or early seicento deception,” its face, hand, and horn finely modeled while the rest “deliberately summarily modeled and heavily patinated to suggest the ravages of time.”[4]
-JF


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. Letter from Breck to Mills, dated November 12, 1926, MMA Archives. For the box, see cat. A<26.276.1>.
2. MMA Archives.
3. ESDA/OF.
4. R. Stone/TR, October 18, 2012.