Italy, Florence, attributed to Antonio Susini... Lot 21

Italy, Florence, attributed to Antonio Susini (1558-1624), after a model by John of Bologna (1529 -1608), early 17th century. Equestrian statue of Henry IV in bronze with nuanced brown patina with brass elements. The king turns his head to his left, his bust slightly tilted backwards, holding a staff of command in his right hand, the reins in his other hand, he is dressed in armor, a scarf slung over his shoulder, and carries the collar of the order of the Holy Spirit, the Maltese cross resting on his breastplate. The horse is in a slow walking position, with the right front leg raised and the left hind leg above the ground. Particularly careful carving work, remarkable in the treatment of the beard, the scarf, the flourishes decorating the basques, the worked and fringed edges of the saddle cloth. Beautiful morphology of the horse with the folds of the skin of the neck and the joints of the legs as well as the subtle musculature of the body. Molded ebony veneer base with geometric decoration of bone fillets. Height: 38.5 cm – Total height: 54 cm (a few missing pieces including the tail, small accidents on the base) Provenance: - Art market, Charleroi in the 1970s - Private collection, Belgium This equestrian statue should be compared to the monumental one, commissioned from Jean Bologna by Marie de Medici, wife of the king, via her uncle Ferdinand I, which was erected on the Pont-Neuf in 1614. It had been cast a few years earlier by Pietro Tacca (1577-1640) , Florentine sculptor appointed to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who had inherited the master's workshop upon his death in 1608 as his first assistant. This sculpture, destroyed following the Revolution, is known to us through several drawings, including that of 1608 by Ludovicao Cardi, di Il Cigoli, also an assistant to Bologna (fig.). A reduced version of Henri IV on horseback was made in 1604 and sent to Paris. We find it inventoried in 1684 in the royal collections A figure of Henry IV on horseback, as it is on the new bridge, fourteen and a half inches [39.2 cm] high, estimated fifteen hundred pounds. His current location is unknown. We know of numerous examples of small models, of varying heights: 64.2 cm for the one attributed to Tacca belonging to the Wallace Collection (inv. S 158), 47 cm for the one attributed to Susini from the Dijon Museum of Fine Arts ( inv. CA 1369), however most are close to 40 cm, like the bronze from the Crown, which has passed through the art market (Paris sale, Hôtel Drouot, Me Kohn, April 13, 2012, lot 35) , another at the Fabre museum in Montpellier attributed to the workshop of Guillaume Dupré (inv. 836.4.90, or another belonging to the New York collector Michael Hall, n°58 from the Springfield exhibition of 1981. We note in these final examples of the significant differences with the definitive version of the Pont-Neuf bronze produced by Tacca which suggest that these are not simple replicas: the horse's mane falling on the left side of its neck, the sword carried on the king's left hip, its point resting on the animal's hindquarters and not on its flank. The king is here cast in one piece with the saddle and his rug, his arms cast separately fixed by brooches. The horse is cast in a single block, the tail (disappeared) melted separately was brought back. This group thus differs from those of Dijon and the Wallace Collection where the king's head is cast separately. It is really very close to the example from the Hall collection known to have come from the workshop of Antonio Susini who was reputed to complete the small bronzes of Jean Bologne. We find there in fact a similar quality of carving showing great precision in the details and a perfect mastery of the living musculature of the animal. Works consulted: - New York Exhibition 1998, Giambologna [1529.1608], Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, C. Avery, cat. 39, pp. 113-115. - Paris Exhibition 1999, The Bronzes of the Crown, Louvre Museum, n°143, p.116. - C. Avery and M. Hall, Giambologna (1529-1608), Paris, 1999, cat.39, p147-149. - J. Warren, Catalog of Italian sculpture, The Wallace Collection, London, 2016, cat. 114, p.518 to 531. Expert: Cabinet Fligny. Paris. [Ground floor: missing: tail, end of the command staff, reins, a stirrup, part of the bit, blade of the sword reattached, precarious fixation, a definitive fixing will have to be considered by a professional,a complement of the harness on the animal's back? some gaps and crack on the base]