Watch List notes:

*Italy, Pseudo-Fra Antonio da Brescia, Apollo and Python, bronze plaquette (early 16th century), naked Apollo holding bow and standing facing, his left arm resting on a tree stump from which hangs his quiver; at his feet the dead serpent/dragon Python; in the background, a landscape with trees and a ruined tower, 66.4mm (Molinier 119; Bange 642; Kress 187 and fig. 236; Warren, Ashmolean Museum Plaquetttes, 333), small piercing at top, an extremely fine contemporary cast with brown patina (the reverse with collectors' numbers and an old ticket now unattached) Ex Dr G. Brockmann collection, Peus 411, 31 October 2013, lot 1218. The association of this plaquette with Fra Antonio da Brescia depends on the reverse of a signed medal of a certain Niccolò Vonico of Treviso with a similar reverse design to the present plaquette (as Hill 476). But commentators suggest that the plaquette is the more successful version of the two designs and that the signed medal actually copies the plaquette – hence the name given to the plaquette maker of this and some other associated pieces as Pseudo-Fra Antonio da Brescia. Douglas Lewis (in "Collectors of Renaissance Reliefs: Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) and Baron Boissel de Monville (1763-1832)", St.HistArt 70, 2008, p. 130) has renamed him the "Vicentine Master of 1507" due to his close relationship with two artists of Vicenza, the painter Bartolomeo Montagna and the printmaker Benedetto Montagna. He calls the subject matter of the present plaquette Virtue Triumphant over Vice (publication pending). (£3000 - 5000)