Roebuck attacked by hound

In 1784, the sculptor-restorer Francesco Antonio Franzoni incorporated ancient fragments into the marble group of this composition, which he assembled for Pope Pius VI. It is among the peculiar delights of the Vatican Museums’ Sala degli Animali, where it is paired with Franzoni’s similarly reconstructed Stag Attacked by a Hound.[1] Bronze reductions ensued in large numbers. Alvar González-Palacios assigned a cast of the Stag group to the prolific founder Francesco Righetti, but neither it nor the Roebuck model occurs in the price lists of Righetti or of his contemporary Giovanni Zoffoli.[2] The Stag group is glossier in appearance than the present one, whose master interested himself in providing the beasts with furry hides in place of the Vatican marble’s matte surfaces.[3] The surface is patinated a rich, dark brown. The roebuck’s right hind leg was broken just below the joint and repaired with solder.
-JDD

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. González-Palacios 2013, nos. 169, 171.
2. Ibid., p. 35, fig. 16. The cast was then in the collection of Jacques Petit-Horry, Paris. For the price lists, see Haskell and Penny 1981, appendix.
3. Yet another foundry produced variations on the pelts in a pair sold at Sotheby’s, London, April 12, 1990, lot 126.