A prophet

In his pioneering book on Venetian sculptors published in 1921, Leo Planiscig assigned this bronze to the Paduan Tiziano Aspetti, nicknamed Minio.[1] The attribution has never been contested, despite the lack of documentary evidence. On the basis of the hornlike protrusion on the figure’s head, Planiscig identified him as Moses. In 1976, however, Ian Wardropper observed that the figure holds a book rather than a tablet of the law, and that the head is topped by an unchased casting mass and not horns.[2] Thus, he should be considered simply a prophet, as Wardopper more fully explained in 2001. This shift in subject redirects attention to the statuette’s unfinished condition and its overall sketchiness. Claudia Kryza-Gersch observed that the bronze appears to be a “relict cast,” in which the plasticity of the wax or terracotta model is still visible.[3] The forms are roughly delineated: massive hands grasp the book like claws; the robe cascades down the lower limbs as if it were liquid; the beard and facial features are impressionistically rendered. The result is an exquisite painterly and expressive cast.

The unworked back with two oval bulges might indicate that the statuette was intended for display in a small niche. A hole in the right hand suggests that something was meant to be inserted into it. In 1545, Minio was commissioned to execute a serraglio (grill) for the Santo in Padua that, according to Vasari, was left incomplete at the sculptor’s premature death.[4] We know that the models for the grill survived, as they were requested by the Paduan sculptor Francesco Segala in 1564.[5] Wardropper concludes that the Prophet is a later cast by Segala of one of Minio’s wax models for the unfinished Paduan grill. In this context, it is interesting to note that another cast of this figure paired with a Sybil has been circulating on the art market since the 1950s.[6] Although the quality of these two statuettes is difficult to judge, their existence attests to the possibility of a larger series of which our Prophet would have been one component.

While we have no definitive proof that the Prophet is by Minio, the attribution is reasonable. The figure’s roughness hampers comparison with other bronzes by the artist, such as the reliefs for the cover of the baptismal font in the Basilica of San Marco, Venice. Given the similarity of the statuette’s proportions and pose to the work of Jacopo Sansovino and Alessandro Vittoria, it is most certainly Venetian.7 But even more striking is its kinship with Venetian painting of the 1550s, in particular the works of Andrea Meldolla, called Schiavone. The Prophet, with its coarse forms, dialogues particularly well with Schiavone’s Jesus before Herod (fig. 61a).
-FL

Footnotes
(For key to shortened references see bibliography in Allen, Italian Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022.)


1. The nickname appears for the first time in Scardeone 1560, pp. 376–77. On Minio in general, see Rigoni 1953; Manfred Leithe-Jasper in Bacchi et al. 1999, p. 227; Bacchi 2000, pp. 762–63; Leithe-Jasper in Padua 2001, p. 239–42; Siracusano 2011.
2. ESDA/OF.
3. Ibid.
4. Wardropper 2001, p. 114. Vasari 1912–15, vol. 9, p. 203: “He [Minio] had begun for the same chapel [of Saint Anthony in Padua] a grating [serraglio] of five arches in bronze, which were full of stories of that Saint, with other figures in half-relief and low-relief; but this, also, by reason of his death . . . remained unfinished. Many pieces of it had already been cast . . . and many others were made in wax, when he died . . .” For the documents related to this commission, see Rigoni 1970, pp. 201–15. The work was to be a collaboration between Minio and the Carrarese sculptor Danese Cattaneo; see M. Rossi 1995, pp. 39–40. See also Siracusano 2011.
5. The document is published in Gonzati 1852–53, vol. 1, p. CXXXI, doc. CXXII. On Segala, see Siracusano 2015.
6. With Edward Lubin, Inc., ca. 1959; it was sold at Sotheby’s, London, December 14, 2001, lot 50, as “Cast after a model by Minio probably by Segala.”
7. See Bacchi in Vezzosi 2002, pp. 33–37.