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Lot Essay
Milo of Croton was a legendary Greek athlete from the settlement of Croton in southern Italy. He won the wrestling contest at five successive Olympic games and was victorious at all other festivals. A man of huge stature, he boasted that no one had ever brought him to his knees and that he once carried a live ox on his shoulders through the stadium at Olympia and then ate it in a single day. Tradition has it that in his old age, on seeing an oak tree partly split open with a wedge, he tried to wrench it apart, but only succeeded in causing the wedge to fall out, thereby trapping his hands. He was left a helpless prey to the wild beasts who slowly ate him.
The source for the bronze offered here appears to be Pordenone's (1483-1539) oil on canvas of Milo Attacked by Wild Beasts from circa 1535 in the David and Alfred Smart Museum, University of Chicago (Cohen, loc. cit.). The composition is virtually identical with the exception of the positioning of Milo's proper left hand and the placement of the lion. The latter variation was, no doubt, made in order to make the composition more compact and thus easier to cast. In terms of facture, the heavy cast with a brassy alloy and dark patination might at first suggest that it was made in a foundry north of the Alps. However, the same observations could also point to a foundry in the Veneto. This idea is supported by the fact that Pordenone's Milo was almost certainly painted while the artist was in Venice in the 1530s and the work remained there until at least the early 17th century. When one considers highly influential Venetian sculptors like the Grandi, Jacopo Sansovino and Alessandro Vittoria, one begins to see elements in this bronze that echo the styles of these great names: the sleek, almost anthropomorphic, lions in the Grandi's door knocker in the Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento, Sansovino's densely bearded, pathetic, figures from the doors of the Sacristy in the Basilica of San Marco, Venice, and Vittoria's muscular, contorted, Neptune in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Trento, op. cit., p. 192, no. 4, p. 209, fig. 2 and pp. 346-9, no. 76 respectively). A final comparison ought also to be made with a bronze bearded man in a contorted pose formerly with Daniel Katz, London (Berlin, loc. cit.). This figure displays a similar attention to the anatomy, treatment of the hair and face, and a dark black patination with a brassy alloy. While these parallels do not allow an attribution to be made for the bronze offered here, they do provide a plausible theory for the bronze being conceived and executed in Venice in the late 16th or early 17th century.
The source for the bronze offered here appears to be Pordenone's (1483-1539) oil on canvas of Milo Attacked by Wild Beasts from circa 1535 in the David and Alfred Smart Museum, University of Chicago (Cohen, loc. cit.). The composition is virtually identical with the exception of the positioning of Milo's proper left hand and the placement of the lion. The latter variation was, no doubt, made in order to make the composition more compact and thus easier to cast. In terms of facture, the heavy cast with a brassy alloy and dark patination might at first suggest that it was made in a foundry north of the Alps. However, the same observations could also point to a foundry in the Veneto. This idea is supported by the fact that Pordenone's Milo was almost certainly painted while the artist was in Venice in the 1530s and the work remained there until at least the early 17th century. When one considers highly influential Venetian sculptors like the Grandi, Jacopo Sansovino and Alessandro Vittoria, one begins to see elements in this bronze that echo the styles of these great names: the sleek, almost anthropomorphic, lions in the Grandi's door knocker in the Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento, Sansovino's densely bearded, pathetic, figures from the doors of the Sacristy in the Basilica of San Marco, Venice, and Vittoria's muscular, contorted, Neptune in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Trento, op. cit., p. 192, no. 4, p. 209, fig. 2 and pp. 346-9, no. 76 respectively). A final comparison ought also to be made with a bronze bearded man in a contorted pose formerly with Daniel Katz, London (Berlin, loc. cit.). This figure displays a similar attention to the anatomy, treatment of the hair and face, and a dark black patination with a brassy alloy. While these parallels do not allow an attribution to be made for the bronze offered here, they do provide a plausible theory for the bronze being conceived and executed in Venice in the late 16th or early 17th century.