Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Buddensieg, Tilmann

Titel

Die Ziege Amalthea von Riccio und Falconetto

Ist Teil von

• Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, 1963-01, Vol.5, p.121-150

Ort / Verlag

Gebr. Mann

Erscheinungsjahr

1963

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• All attempts at completing Riccio's bronze statuette of a "Shepard with Goat" in the Bargello of Florence have failed to produce a satisfactory result. A fresco in the Palazzo d'Arco in Mantua painted by Falconetto in 1520, now permits the solution of the problem: in the picture of the month of April we find a goat and a shepherd in a composition identical with that of Riccio's statuette. Only that here a little boy is added. The context in which this scene appears in the fresco permits the identification of the group: a Curet or Corybant tenders the udder of Amalthea to the infant Jupiter. A number of indications and considerations permit the dating of the bronze in the 2nd decade of the 16th cent. A survey of the ancient and post-ancient renderings of this subject shows Riccio's group as an independent iconographic creation. It must be added, however, that some of Mantegna's figural motifs played a decisive part in its composition. The second question, namely why and in what formal context Falconetto adopted the group, leads to a short analysis of the cycle. This inspection reveals a large number of borrowings from ancient architecture, sarcophagi and other reliefs unparalleled in that time. It is an evident conclusion that Falconetto displayed Riccio's group as a "reconstruction of an ideal antique" (Panofsky). standing among his adaptations of real antiques. Riccio's achievement, such as it is reflected in Falconetto's interpretation, was so successful that only 100 years after his death many of his creations were taken for genuine works of antiquity (for example by Fortunio Liceto, 1652) and later by Montfaucon (L'Antiquité expliquée, 1719). It was only in the 19th century that Riccio's bronzes were removed from collections of ancient art.