Saturday, February 22, 2025

Pretend Antiquities

workshop of Antico (Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi)
Hercules
ca. 1496
bronze
Gallerie Estense, Modena

Anonymous Florentine Artist
Meleager
ca. 1520-60
marble relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Baccio Bandinelli
Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1540
marble
Bode Museum, Berlin

Simone Bianco
Idealized Classical Bust
ca. 1540
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Alessandro Vittoria
Portrait of Pietro Zeno
ca. 1570
marble
Bode Museum, Berlin

Anonymous Italian Artist
The Spinario
ca. 1590
marble
(based on an antique bronze)
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Barthélemy Prieur
Woman extracting a Thorn from her Heel
ca. 1600
bronze
Bode Museum, Berlin

Hendrik de Keyser the Elder
Mercury
ca. 1625-50
bronze
(later cast of original from 1611)
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum,
Braunschweig

Philippe de Buyster
Personification of Satiric Poetry
ca. 1675-80
marble
Château de Versailles

Camillo Rusconi
Faun
1728
marble
Bode Museum, Berlin

Lambert Sigisbert Adam
Classically-Draped Woman donning a Sandal
1731
marble
Bode Museum, Berlin

Filippo and Ignazio Collino
Bust of Julius Caesar
ca. 1785
marble
(nose deliberately broken, as if antique)
Galleria Sabauda, Turin

Anonymous French Artist
Portrait of Henri IV
(posthumous and idealized) 
18th century
bronze
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Emanuel Bardou
Portrait of Immanuel Kant
1798
marble
(modeled after the traditional appearance of Aristotle)
Bode Museum, Berlin

Joseph Nollekens
Henry Vassal Fox, 3rd Baron Holland
1799
marble
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Anonymous Italian Artist after Antonio Canova
Ganymede
ca. 1810
marble
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

from Clotho

           after Camille Claudel

And always there was something there you could not reach:
it flickered below the surface of the marble
like a candle behind a grimed window,
mocking your eager questions like an echo.

– Caitríona O'Reilly, Geis (2015)