Lot n° 87
Estimation :
6000 - 8000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 10 400EUR
Bone Transi of Adonis carved in the round, depicting the ske - Lot 87
Bone Transi of Adonis carved in the round, depicting the skeleton of the Greek god standing, walking and turning backwards, resting his left hand on the head of a leaping boar, his right arm holding a shroud; the skull still has wavy hair, the legs covered with their skin but revealing the bone structure in some places; the base supports debris of bones.
Southern Germany or Tyrol, mid-18th century
Height: 17 cm
(Minor accidents)
The composition of this sculpture is directly inspired by a marble in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, sculpted by the Italian master Guiseppe Mazzuoli (Volterra 1644 - Rome 1725) between 1700 and 1710 (inv Nsk-1113), depicting the death of Adonis by the boar he was hunting (fig). In the spirit of memento mori, the artist of this vanitas wanted to transcribe human finitude beyond the supreme beauty of youth.
Adonis is loved by Aphrodite. His beauty from birth is almost a danger. Having succumbed to the charms of the goddess of love, but also arousing the jealousy of Persephone, the young ephebe dies hunting a boar. His spilt blood gives birth to the anemone.
Macabre art draws its inspiration from the philosophical currents of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, in an attempt to give meaning to the finitude of beings and things. The artist's intention here was to use the representation of youthful beauty embodied by Adonis, at the moment of his death at the hands of a wild beast, to evoke not lost beauty but the futility of a desirable representation affected by the inevitable corruption of the body. Underlying this evidence of death, however, is the theme of the metamorphosis of death into new life in the form of the flower born of the god's shed blood. Christian theology is obviously not far off. So it's not a putrid image we need to contemplate, but a greater spiritual invisibility.
If the golden century for the representation of death may be the 17th century, the 18th century is not without accomplished works. The rare use of bone, a less noble material than the ivory employed by the great German workshops in particular, is nevertheless known in works from Northern Italy, such as double-sided rosary beads. Funerary art using bones in the crypts of convents and chapels is also well known: the Capuchin chapel in Rome, the Sledec ossuary in the Czech Republic, where chandeliers are made from bones.
This small sculpture, inspired by a monumental work kept in collections until 1923, before its entry into the Hermitage Museum, thus offers a perceptive view of an 18th-century humanist, living in contact with Roman Baroque productions and wishing to communicate a thought that has never ceased to agitate the human spirit.
Book consulted: Anne Lamort, La mort en faces, Frank Boucquillon collection, Knokke Le Zoute, 2020
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