Seated Nymph

model created and cast probably 1503
bronze with gilding and silvering
19.5 (7 5/8)
Robert H. and Clarice Smith

On January 29, 1503, Isabella d’Este wrote to bishop-elect Ludovico Gonzaga asking if Antico could produce a companion for the Spinario she had received from the artist in 1501. Isabella left the choice of figure to the artist, indicating it would be “put on a cornice above a door opposite the one where the boy is located, to give symmetry....” On September 9, 1503, the figure was delivered from Ludovico, who wrote: “I send it all the more willingly so that Your Excellency may know that I still have some women about the house.” This mysterious comment might be a playful reference to his celibacy and suggests that the bronze depicted a female subject.

Seated on a rock with her left leg and foot raised, the pose of the Seated Nymph is an elegant response to the Spinario. The design was derived from a large-scale Roman marble that an 18th-century engraving identified as “Venus removing a thorn from her foot,” thus performing the same act as the Spinario. The ancient sculpture was displayed in Rome during Antico’s time, although its state of preservation required the artist to invent the head (which was missing) and many details. The elegant head resembles those of female figures by Andrea Mantegna that Antico might have known from engravings such as Four Women Dancing.

The original velvety black patina of the Nymph’s skin, now preserved only in traces, was created chemically using acids and heat. Antico was the only Renaissance artist to use chemical patinations consistently—his contemporaries achieved similar effects with more conventional pigmented coatings. To the Renaissance eye, these dark surfaces must have endowed the bronze with an aura of antiquity, perfected and unadulterated by the ravages of time.

References: Hermann 1909/1910, 257–262; Allison 1993/1994, 181–185, cat. 23A; Radcliffe and Penny 2004, 84–89, cat. 13 (entry by Nicholas Penny)