A Mars by Giambologna crosses the Atlantic

1. Giambologna (1529-1608)
Mars, c. 1565-1570 (model) and c. 1580 (cast), detail
Bronze - H. 39,4 cm
Hartford, The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
Photo: Stuart Lochhead Sculpture

See the image in its page

22/4/24 - Acquisition - Hartford, The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art - Much admired in London in July 2023 and in Maastricht in March 2024, Stuart Lochhead’s very fine Mars by Giambologna (ill. 1) was bound to interest the major North American museums, and it was naturally one of the most eminent of them that purchased it for a substantial sum, since the asking price was four million dollars, as TEFAF itself announced at its opening. The bronze will now go to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, thanks to a bequest from Charles H. Schwartz (1924-1995) to finance acquisitions of ancient art, such as the great Solimena recently sold in Paris (see news item of 14/9/22) or, earlier, Artemisia Gentileschi’s Autoportrait with Lute (see news item of 3/4/14), which quickly became jewels in the collection of this museum founded in 1844.

This exceptional piece is no stranger to the market, where it made its first appearance at Christie’s in London in December 2007 before being offered by the Tomasso Brothers gallery, which commissioned Charles Avery, an eminent specialist in Renaissance Italy, to write an extensive note published in their January 2016 catalogue. For his part, Stuart Lochhead called on Jeremy Warren - former curator of sculpture at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum - for his Giambologna catalogue for the summer of 2023, his exhibition being nicely entitled "The Alchemist’s Laboratory. Giambologna’s Forge in Florence". Although Giambologna’s Mars was a great success and is still known from numerous bronze casts, very few of them were executed in the sixteenth century, and the best documented - though certainly not the oldest - is the one in the Dresden collections, which appeared in the Saxon inventories in 1587 and was the…