Pegasus

The mythological winged horse Pegasus was companion to the muses on Mount Helicon. Rearing up and striking his hooves on the ground, he created the Hippocrene spring, a font of intellectual and poetic inspiration. Renaissance humanists appropriated this subject to symbolize the classical source of their creativity. The Venetian scholar Pietro Bembo, for example, famously chose rearing Pegasus as his personal emblem.[1] By the mid-sixteenth century, statuettes such as ours had become popular accoutrements to the scholar’s study. Displayed on tables or shelves, they embodied their patrons’ erudite aspirations.[2]

Two separate types of the rearing Pegasus are known. Both are associated with the ubiquitous workshops in Venice and especially Padua that produced small bronzes in large quantities for the educated middle-class market. The first type shows the rearing horse supported by a bronze strut modeled to emulate a landscape form; it dates to around the mid-sixteenth century and is about 30 cm in height.[3] In the second type, represented by The Met example, the horse is supported only by the twin points of its rear hooves. Models of this type date to the late sixteenth century, are about 16 to 18 cm in height, and have been associated with the Venetian workshop of Nicolò Roccatagliata.[4]

Our Pegasus is an indirect hollow cast with solid limbs.[5] Details such as the horse’s feathered wings, curling mane, large eyes, and tiny teeth were modeled and incised in the wax without subsequent tooling in the metal. By contrast, the horse’s body, limbs, and head were filed overall in the bronze to create smooth surfaces that complement the lively, textured details. The cast gives the impression of swift, competent execution characteristic of northern Italian workshops. The Pegasus is significant as an example of the Renaissance bronze industry rather than of individual creative artistry.

The author is unknown and likely to remain so. The invention of this composition probably resulted from the common workshop practice of adapting an existing model to new uses. The closest counterpart to this Pegasus type is a bridled, saddled, and shod Rearing Horse in the Bargello.[6] A derivative of the model for the Rearing Horse probably was repurposed to create The Met bronze. The Pegasus retains the distinctive bronze attachment plate between the rear hooves, and most tellingly, the prominent nailed horseshoes typical of Renaissance battle chargers but not of mythological flying horses.
-DA

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. David Gasparotto in Beltramini et al. 2013, pp. 378–79, cat. 6.13.
2. Warren 2006, p. 296, with earlier sources.
3. Warren 2014, nos. 65 and 66, with earlier sources.
4. See, for example, Finearte Casa d’Aste, Milan, April 17, 2007, Asta 1370: Importanti sculture dalla Grecia classica al contemporaneo, lot 24.
5. R. Stone/TR, 2011.
6. Bargello, 580. Noted by Charles Avery in Asta 1370, lot 24 (see note 4).