Attributed to Ferdinando Tacca (1619 - 1686), Florence, 17th century

Sylvia Phyllis Adams Collection (1907 - 1998), London;

With Daniel Katz Ltd, London;

Where acquired, 15 March 2012.

The dramatic gesture with which this woman points a dagger to her left breast, could refer to two heroines with tragic destinies, one from Ancient History and the other from the Old Testament. The first, Dido, is the legendary founder and first queen of Carthage, abandoned by Aeneas. The second, Lucretia, is the virtuous wife of Tarquinius. However, the crown she wears tends to confirm the first hypothesis, which we will retain here, proposed for the first time by J. D. Draper in 1975. Dido's suicide is taken from Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid. It describes how the queen of Carthage, abandoned and desperate, has the belongings of her betrayed love placed on a pyre, before throwing herself onto it and killing herself with the very sword that Aeneas had given her. The curse she utters at that moment, against him and his descendants, foreshadows the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage.

Only a few bronzes of this model are known, one of which is in the Victoria & Albert Museum (inv. A.113-1956; as Dido), another, from the Irwin Untermyer collection, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 64.101.1466; also as Dido), and a third one, a silvered bronze, in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich (inv. 63/3; as Lucretia). A last example, from the collection of Anne-Aymone and Valéry Giscard-d'Estaing, recently came up for sale (Beaussant-Lefèvre & Associés, Paris, 13 December 2022, lot 86 ; as Lucretia, Germany, 16th century).

Draper associated the ample forms of Dido, comparable to Rubens' voluptuous models, with the work of a Flemish sculptor active in Rome in the mid-17th century, in the circle of Bernini (op. cit., p. 232). He also draws a parallel between this model and the figures in François Duquesnoy's group of the Flagellation of Christ. Radcliffe, referring to the V&A example, takes up this hypothesis and suggests that the model derives from an ivory or boxwood statuette. In April 1994, Draper proposed a new attribution of the model to Ferdinando Tacca (Metropolitan Museum of Art, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Objects files [ESDA/OF]). He refers to the narrative and eminently theatrical series of bronzes by the Florentine sculptor, notably Roger and Angelica (an example in the Louvre Museum, inv. OA 7811, Bronze de la Couronne No. 281) and Mercury and Juno (an example at the Walter Art Gallery, Liverpool, inv. WAG 7398).

The attribution to Tacca is now accepted by the V&A and, intermittently, by the Metropolitan Museum. In fact, the dramatic intensity of the present Dido, launched into a frantic race, her head thrown back and her eyes imploring, embodies the culmination of her tragic destiny and is reminiscent of the declamatory compositions characteristic of Tacca.

RELATED LITERATURE

Bronzes, Other Metalwork and Sculpture in the Irwin Untermyer Collection, exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1962, p. XXXV, fig. 79, pl. 76; A. Radcliffe, European Bronze Statuettes, London, 1966, p. 108; H. R. Weihrauch, Europäische Bronzestatuetten 15.–18. Jahrhundert. Braunschweig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1967, pp. 479-80; Bayerisches Nationalmuseum. Bildführer 1. Bronzeplastik, Munich, 1974, p. 62; J. D. Draper, “Notable Acquisitions, 1965–1975”, in MMA, New York, 1975, p. 232; A. Radcliffe, “Ferdinando Tacca, the missing link in Florentine Baroque Bronzes”, in Kunst des Barock in der Toskana, Munich, 1976, pp. 14-23; J. D. Draper, Highlights of the Untermyer Collection of English and Continental Decorative Arts, exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1977, pp. 170-71, no. 317; D. Allen, L. Borsch, J. D. Draper, J. Fraiman, R. E. Stone (eds.), Italian Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2022, pp. 485-86.