Barberini Faun

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Barberini Faun
The Barberini Faun
ArtistGiuseppe Giorgetti: Restoration
Year2nd century BC
Catalogue11.2
TypeSculpture
MediumMarble
LocationGlyptothek, Munich

The life-size

Munich, Germany. A faun is the Roman equivalent of a Greek satyr. In Greek mythology, satyrs were human-like male woodland spirits with several animal features, often a goat-like tail, hooves, ears, or horns. Satyrs attended Dionysus.[citation needed
]

History

The sculpture was either carved by an unknown

Johann Winckelmann speculated that the place of discovery and the statue's condition suggested that it had been such a projectile.[5]

External videos
video icon smARThistory - Barberini Faun, c. 220 B.C.E.[6]

It was traditionally asserted that Cardinal Maffeo

Barberini commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini to restore the statue, "but there is no evidence for the tradition that Bernini was in any way involved with the statue," Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny observed in 1981, after reviewing the documentation and literature. Restorations, at first in stucco, were remade in 1679 by Giuseppe Giorgetti and Lorenzo Ottoni, who enabled the antique left leg to be reaffixed and provided the elaborate supporting structure that is illustrated in Paolo Alessandro Maffei's Raccolta di statue (1704);[7]
in the eighteenth century the right leg was again restored in marble, and once more by Pacetti in 1799. (The sculpture is shown today without the restored hanging left arm.)

These restorations of the Barberini Faun may have enhanced the sexual aspect of the statue. Because of this, the statue has acquired a reputation as an example of erotic art. Nudity in Greek art was nothing new; however, the blatant sexuality of this work makes it most interesting to twentieth-century eyes. His wantonly spread legs focus attention on his genitals. Not all viewers have found the Faun so indecorous: the Barberini Faun was reproduced on a

Nymphenburg porcelain
service in the 1830s.

The statue was housed in the Palazzo Barberini, Rome, until it was sold in 1799 to the sculptor and restorer Vincenzo Pacetti; Pacetti offered it to various English and French clients, including Lucien Bonaparte. The Barberini brought suit to annul the sale and eventually sold the Faun, after much public competition and a ban on its exportation, strongly supported by the antiquarian Carlo Fea and by Antonio Canova— to Ludwig, Crown Prince of Bavaria. Ludwig had planned a special room in the Glyptothek designed by the architect Leo von Klenze before the purchase was even finalized, and it was in place by 1827. The Glyptothek[8] opened in 1830 to house Ludwig's sculpture collection.

Copy by Edmé Bouchardon (Louvre)

Copies

A marble copy was sculpted by

Louvre Museum
.

A copy by sculptor Eugène-Louis Lequesne was given to France in 1846. It is now located in the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts.[9]

A gilded copy is included among many other replicas of classical sculptures that adorn the grand cascade that descends from the back of

St. Petersburg, Russia
.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ It is 215 cm long.
  2. ^ Martin Robertson, A History of Greek Art 1975 (Cambridge University Press) vol I, p. 534.
  3. ^ Nancy H. Ramage, "Restorer and Collector: Notes on Eighteenth-Century Recreations of Roman Statues", Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. Supplementary Volume 1, The Ancient Art of Emulation: Studies in Artistic Originality and Tradition from the Present to Classical Antiquity (2002:61-77)
  4. ^ Haskell and Penny 1981:202.
  5. ^ Winckelmann, Storia delle arti del disegno presso gli antichi, edited by Carlo Fea, noted by Haskell and Penny.
  6. ^ "Barberini Faun, c. 220 B.C.E." smARThistory at Khan Academy. Retrieved December 18, 2012.
  7. ^ The engraving is reproduced in Haskell and Penny 1981:fig. 16.
  8. ^ γλύφειν glyphein, "to carve".
  9. ^ "Ecole des Beaux Arts, the world's most influential art school". Minor Sights. Retrieved 30 July 2017.

References

  • Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, 1991. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (Yale University Press). Cat. no. 33, pp 202–05.

External links

Media related to Barberini Faun at Wikimedia Commons