Adriaen de VRIES (The Hague, ca. 1556 - Prague,... Lot 294

Adriaen de VRIES (The Hague, ca. 1556 - Prague, 1626) Hercules, Dejanira and the centaur Nessus Model created in Prague around 1608. Bronze with brown patina. End of the18th century - 1st tird of the XIXth century. Height : 82 cm. Height : 82 cm. (Wear to the patina) Adriaen de Vries was born in The Hague in 1556, he is mentioned in Florence in 1581 in the workshop of Jean Bologne as a founder. He then worked in Milan and Turin, then in Prague and Augsburg, where he was a sculptor for the imperial court. He died in 1626 in Prague. Hercules has just delivered his wife Dejanira from the grip of the centaur Nessus. This group is based on the subject of the bronze by Adrien de Vries, acquired by the emperor Rudolf II around 1607-1608. It is probably the work mentioned in a letter from the sculptor to the emperor, and may have been cast between the end of 1602 and 1608. It can be identified by the number 1892 in the inventory of the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II, which was drawn up between 1607 and 1611. The work refers to the abduction scenes of John of Bologna, whose assistant Adrien de Vries was. The artist may have designed his group to overshadow that of Hubert Gerhard (Vienna, KHM) acquired by Rudolf II probably around 1602 when the emperor sought to invite Gerhard to Prague. The group was probably part of the looting that accompanied the end of the Thirty Years' War. It was given by Louis XIV to the Grand Dauphin at the end of 1681, and is listed as number 3 in his 1689 inventory. Then the bronze was taken back by the king at the death of his son and engraved with the number 301. It is now in the Louvre Museum (0A 5424). Some later replicas are known (Zimmermann 1969, p. 55-57), some of which have a drapery hiding Hercules' sex (Amsterdam, Rijsksmuseum). The others are nineteenth-century castings, one of which is signed Crozatier with the date 1847. They were cast after the copy in the royal collections. Bibliography: - Migeon, 1904, n. 152 - Weihrauch, 1967, p.358-359 - Souchal, 1973, p. 43 - Larson 1988, p. 135 - Rudolph II and Prague Exhibition, 1997, n.1-123 - Castellucio, 1998, p. 359, 363, n. 32 - Adriaen de Vries Exhibition, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Nationalmuseum Stockholm, The J. Paul Getty Museum Los Angeles, 1998-1999, n.14 - Antonovich, F., L'art à la cour de Rodolphe II, Prague et son rayonnement, Paris, 1992 - Rodolphe empereur alchimiste et mécène", in KAPPLER, C., THIOLIER-MÉJEAN, S., Alchimies, Occident-Orient, Collection Kubaba, Série Actes Université de Paris I, L'Harmattan, 2007.