Recumbent Lion - Central Italy, 17th Century

Recumbent Lion

Bronze with dark brown patina

Central Italy, 17th century

15 x 23,5 x 11 cm

The lion is modelled couchant on an integral rectangular base, the body elongated with the forelegs extended forward and the tail curled over the haunch and falling along the left flank. The powerfully modelled head is turned three-quarters and slightly raised, the gaze directed upward. The mane, worked in undulating, chisel-textured locks, frames a strongly expressive face — a broad, wrinkled muzzle, drooping jowls, and prominent brow ridges — and continues into a ruff falling over the chest. The small, curled ears stand out clearly from the mass of the mane.

The stylised, decorative treatment of the mane, arranged in symmetrical flame-like locks, together with the couchant pose with raised head, situates this bronze within the tradition of cabinet and garniture animal figures that flourished across Italy throughout the seventeenth century. Lions of this recumbent type, frequently conceived as a pendant to a companion figure (a lioness, a unicorn, or a dog), have antecedents in sixteenth-century Paduan bronze production and, later, in Florentine workshops close to Giovanni Francesco Susini, where heraldic animals and firedog figures enjoyed a lasting fortune. The model may also be compared to lions used as cabinet weights and paperweights within princely and bourgeois collections of the period.