Massimiliano Soldani Benzi (1656 - 1740)

Sotheby's London, 3 March 1959, lot 129 (as a pair);

Sotheby's London, 8 December 2009, lot 80 (Flora) & lot 81 (Apollo);

Acquired in the sale above.

The first mention of such reductions by Soldani Benzi dates to late 1701, with a commission by Johann Adam, Prince of Liechtenstein, that apparently never came to fruition. The oldest known series is therefore that of the Bargello, with eight bronze statuettes from the Medici family, Soldani's main patron. A second series is mentioned in 1730, in the collection of Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine and son-in-law of Cosimo III, when it was transferred from Düsseldorf to Mannheim (M. Lankheit, op. cit. 1958, p. 193). Among the Soldani bronzes transferred were a Medici Venus, a Dancing Faun, a Leda and the Swan, an Athlete Carrying a Vase, a Bacchus after Sansovino, a group of Virtue Triumphing over Vice after Giambologna, and three Flora figures. The Elector Palatine's collection is now partly preserved in Nuremberg, at the Gewerbmuseum, and in Munich, at the Residenz and the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum. 

It should be noted that the Doccia factory took over Soldani Benzi's moulds, from which a few porcelain examples were cast. According to an old inventory in the archives of the Marquis Ginori-Lisci (Filza 37, no. 22), thirteen reductions by Soldani were thus cast in porcelain, including Flora (Ch. Avery, op. cit. 1976, p. 167, and note 16, p. 172).

The present figure of Apollo Musagete  is based on a brilliant restoration by Caccini of an antique torso in the Uffizi Gallery. Other examples were in the Abbott-Guggenheim collection (Christie's New York, 28 January 2015, lot 108) and the Quentin collection (Christie's Paris, 21 November 2024, lot 31); another is at Chatsworth House (Derbyshire; G. Pratesi, op. cit., fig. 575). The Flora is a reduction based on a badly damaged Ancient marble in the Boboli Gardens. Other examples can be found in the Residenzmuseum, Munich, and in the Ross Collection, Toronto. Pratesi reproduces another, formerly with the Heim Gallery, London (op. cit. fig. 572).

RELATED LITERATURE

K. Lankheit, 'Eine serie barocker Antiken-Nachbildungen aus der Werkstatt des Massimiliano Soldani', in Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung, 65, 1958, pp. 186-98;

C. Avery, 'Soldani's small bronze statuettes after "Old Master" Sculptures in Florence', in Kunst des Barock in der Toskana, Munich, 1976, pp. 165-72, fig. 10 (Flora);

K. Lankheit, Die Modellsammlung der Porzellanmanufaktur Doccia. Ein Dokument italienischer Barockplastik, Munich, 1982 (Apollo);

M. Leithe-Jasper and P. Wengraf, European bronzes from the Quentin collection, exh. cat. Frick Collection, New York, 2004, pp. 274-6, no. 31 (Apollo);

G. Pratesi (ed.), Repertorio della Scultura Fiorentina del Seicento e Settecento, Turin, 1993, III, fig. 572 (Flora), et fig. 575 (Apollo).