Model Of A Crab In Bronze, Renaissance, Padua, 16th.

Crab model in patinated bronze, Renaissance, Padua, 16th. This sculpture is a fine illustration of Italian Renaissance bronze animal subjects. Indeed, it is around workshops like those of Andrea Riccio or Savero da Ravenna, in northern Italy in the 15th-16th centuries, that the animal figure becomes the main subject of the work. Different animals are represented in isolation, whereas until then they had been considered as secondary subjects. Our crab was molded directly on the animal, ensuring strict anatomical accuracy, a technique used by Veneto-Paduan workshops and certainly implemented by Andrea Riccio. These utilitarian objects in the shape of animals were intended for the studioli of wealthy aristocrats who liked to exhibit products of nature alongside works of art, which is what this type of object combines, in the desire to reproduce a miniature vision of the cosmos. A similar model is exhibited at the Louvre Museum under the inventory number MR1721 and another at the kunsthistorisches Museum under the number K. 5922. Literature: Natur und antike in der renaissance, Liebieghaus, museum alter plastik frankfurt am main, 1985. P ; 537, cat. 261.