Watch List notes:

Attributed to Antonio Lombardo (c. 1458-1516), Victory inscribing a Shield - probably an Allegory of the victory of Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, at the Battle of Ravenna on 11 April 1512, bronze rectangular plaquette, Ferrara, c. 1512, winged Victory, nude but for drapery over lower limbs, standing to right with one foot resting on a helmet, inscribing a shield set upon a palm tree; behind her, a flaming artillery projectile, 50.8 x 36.2mm, seemingly unique, an extremely fine contemporary cast of high quality with brown patina. This small but very fine relief, known only in this single version, depicts a standing winged Victory in a form seen on Roman coins, as well as on the columns of the Emperors Trajan (ruled A.D. 98-117) and Marcus Aurelius (ruled A.D. 161-80) in Rome. The source for the image in the plaquette was the reverse of a coin minted for the Emperor Vespasian in A.D. 71, celebrating victory in wars in Judaea (see fig. 1). In a similar plaquette attributed to Riccio (Molinier 493 = Bange 378 = Planiscig p. 460, fig. 565), the figure is entirely robed and, unlike the present relief, features the bound captive seen on another variety of the coin. The present relief has been published as a variant of Riccio's Victory (Bange 378, footnote) but, in fact, its elegant neo-classicism is quite distinct from Riccio's interpretation of the Antique. In truth, the two works only have in common their use of the Roman standing figure of Victory. The flaming artillery projectile seen at left would have been a very modern piece of ordnance when this plaquette was made, raising the possibility that it was in fact made to celebrate victory in a contemporary conflict. This may well have been the Battle of Ravenna on 11 April 1512, in which French forces, aided by the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso I d'Este (1476-1534), were pitted against a combined Spanish and Papal army. Thanks to the famously obsessive personal interest that Duke Alfonso himself took in the technical development of ordnance, the Ferrarese artillery was at this time the best in Italy. The eventual French victory is judged to have been in great part due to the Duke of Ferrara who, at a point when the fate of the battle was in the balance, secretly moved his artillery to cover the enemy flanks where, on opening up, it had a literally shattering impact on the massed Spanish troops. At the Battle of Ravenna, Duke Alfonso made use for the first time of a new form of artillery projectile that he had developed, a metal ball filled with an artificial fire, which would issue from open points in the surface until the whole projectile exploded into flying fragments. It seems plausible to see the flaming projectile in the plaquette as a stylised representation of this deadly new weapon, of which Alfonso was evidently so proud that he subsequently chose a more accurate image of the device as his impresa, his court poet Ludovico Ariosto providing the motto Loco et tempore ('To the time and place'). Further evidence for linking the plaquette with the Battle of Ravenna and the Duke of Ferrara comes in the form of the stylised but unquestionably modern burgonet helmet under Victory's foot, and the prominent presence of a date palm tree, an Este emblem. Alfonso I d'Este was one of the greatest Renaissance patrons, for whom painters of the calibre of Giovanni Bellini and Titian worked. If the plaquette does commemorate the victory at Ravenna, it is very likely to have been designed by Alfonso's court sculptor Antonio Lombardo, with whose sophisticated treatment of antique form it has much in common. No small-scale plaquettes have hitherto been attributed to the sculptor, who in 1506 left Venice to work for Alfonso in Ferrara, where he remained until his death in 1516. A larger bronze relief of Peace (Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art) has also been linked to the Battle of Ravenna by Douglas Lewis, although other scholars have dated it to 1513 when there was a pause in the wars afflicting northern Italy, or later. Antonio Lombardo's greatest achievement as Alfonso's court sculptor was the extensive series of marble reliefs, now in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, which once adorned the celebrated camerino d'alabastro in the Ducal palace in Ferrara. In the background of one of the main reliefs, The Forge of Vulcan, are two niches with small standing figures which, like the present relief faithfully follow classical prototypes. The most important invented element in the plaquette, the artillery ball with its wonderfully sinuous and elegant flames, may be compared with the flaming crucible at the left of The Forge of Vulcan (St Petersburg, Hermitage), or with the waves at the foot of Antonio's relief of the Venus Anadyomene (London, V&A). Provenance: Paul Garnier collection (and illustrated in Les Arts 53, May 1906, p. 21, where thought to be by Fra Antonio da Brescia); formerly in the Eugene Piot (1812-1896) collection, sold Rollin & Feuardent, Paris, 21-24 May 1890, lot 116 (lot number attached to the reverse). We are grateful for the assistance of Dr Jeremy Warren in preparing this footnote and in the attribution of this lot.
(40000-60000 GBP)