Tarquin and Lucretia
The design is a compositional outgrowth of Hubert Gerhard’s Mars, Venus, and Cupid. His large bronze group with that subject, cast in 1584–85 as the centerpiece for a fountain at the Fugger castle, Kirchheim, is now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich, and a fine reduction, with modifications, is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The Tarquin and Lucretia is a further variant in which the movements of both figures are directed more violently to the right. Several examples exist—in museums in Amsterdam, Baden-Baden, Baltimore, and Cleveland, among others. The strongest may be the one in the Metropolitan Museum (50.201; from the Thyssen collection, Schloss Rohoncz).[1] It preserves something of Gerhard and his school. The present bronze is sleeker, and of a yellowish metal covered with the ruddy lacquer patina that is typical of bronzes of the Louis XV period.
The masks on the self-base are equipped with spouts that suggest a table fountain. The masks also appear on the group with which this bronze was formerly paired: a Rape of Deianira, based on a composition by Giovanni Bologna, which is now in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. That museum’s catalogue notes the earliest owner of both bronzes as Baron Vittinghodd-Riesch. Later they belonged to Gorm Rasmussen of Sølyst. In the Rasmussen auction catalogue the two bronzes are illustrated surmounting commodes.
[James D. Draper, 1984]
Footnotes:
[1] For a list of the several casts, see W. D. Wixom, Renaissance Bronzes From Ohio Collections (exhib. cat.), The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975, no. 213.
The masks on the self-base are equipped with spouts that suggest a table fountain. The masks also appear on the group with which this bronze was formerly paired: a Rape of Deianira, based on a composition by Giovanni Bologna, which is now in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. That museum’s catalogue notes the earliest owner of both bronzes as Baron Vittinghodd-Riesch. Later they belonged to Gorm Rasmussen of Sølyst. In the Rasmussen auction catalogue the two bronzes are illustrated surmounting commodes.
[James D. Draper, 1984]
Footnotes:
[1] For a list of the several casts, see W. D. Wixom, Renaissance Bronzes From Ohio Collections (exhib. cat.), The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975, no. 213.
Artwork Details
- Title: Tarquin and Lucretia
- Artist: After a composition by Hubert Gerhard (Netherlandish, 1540/50–1621, active Germany)
- Date: late 17th century
- Culture: possibly French
- Medium: Bronze, with red-brown lacquer patina
- Dimensions: Height (with base): 22 1/4 in. (56.5 cm)
- Classification: Sculpture-Bronze
- Credit Line: The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection, 1982
- Object Number: 1982.60.122
- Curatorial Department: European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
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Hubert Gerhard
1605–10
Hubert Gerhard
after 1595
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ca. 1600
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ca. 1600
Hubert Gerhard
ca. 1600–1625
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