Female Hunter Figures

Scope of Francesco Bertos (1678-1741)

Female hunter figures

(2) Marble, alt. cm 30

The pair of marble sculptures that we present here is part of the Venetian sculpture of the early eighteenth century and in particular within Francesco Bertos, sculptor and founder born in the surroundings of Venice, precisely in Dolo, along the river Brenta. The reconstruction of his biography has been very difficult on the part of the critics, so much so that they could not confirm with certainty the long-held hypothesis of a youthful trip to Rome. A more careful examination, thanks to the new studies carried out on the occasion of the recent exhibition, entitled to him, at the Gallerie d'Italia in Vicenza, has instead considered more plausible trips and experiences in Veneto land or in the neighboring Romagna, Thus outlining a formation linked to the land of origin, where he operated the workshop of Bonazza, founded by his contemporary John, who was also a collaborator. The latter was a pupil of the Flemish artist Giusto Le Court, active in Venice and an exponent of that virtuosity of the Flemish and German sculptors of the seventeenth century which so inspired Bertos in the meticulous realization of small groups of sculptures in bronze and marble. Other sources of inspiration external to Venzia are the Tuscan ones, such as the works of the Florentine Giovanni Battista Foggini, sculptor and architect coevo at the service of the Medici, and those of Manierist mould by Giambologna, whose compositions - like the Two-figure Rat (1579) - were the inspiration for Bertos' most original sculptures. In fact, its fame will be affirmed by the great European customers, as the tsar Peter the Great, the king Carlo Emanuele III of Savoy and the doge Alvise Pisani, thanks to works of small format but rendered with minutia and through compositions of extreme complexity and dynamic structure and free to expand in space.Bertos' incredible technical skill stunned his contemporaries enough to make them believe this mastery was almost superhuman, and even attracted the attention of the Inquisition, who accused him of having made a pact with the devil. In addition to this, so much praised technical virtuosity, the sculptures of Bertos hide a cultured, allegorical, mythological and symbolic dimension that allows them to be interpreted as valuable intellectual games, present, moreover also in this pair of related statuettes as well as by the genre also by the hunting theme, treated by the artist also in other sculptures such as the Allegory of the hunt at the Royal Palace of Turin. If one can be interpreted as Diana, Roman goddess of hunting perhaps represented here in the act of drying after bathing, the other would seem a hunter deity closer to the allegorical representation of the American continent, often depicted with bow and arrows and in a vigilant and combative attitude. The dynamic and fluid poses, the meticulous workmanship, the reduced format and the subtlety with which the hunting theme is allegorically treated thus appear as clear references to the art of this sculptor and to the culture of the period and areas in which he lived and worked.