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Thursday, January 17, 2013

Important Sculpture Featured at Sotheby’s New York During Old Masters Week

Important sculpture and works of art will be up for offer on 1 February 2013 during the second day of Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings and Sculpture sale in New York and will be highlighted by a commanding French marble bust of one of France’s foremost military tacticians Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte, the Comte de Guibert. The bust was commissioned on 2 November, 1791 from Houdon, the preeminent portrait sculptor of his time, by the sitter's widow (est. $800/1.2 million). Guibert was a general, a writer and a friend to many of the Enlightenment's leading intellectuals, and his Essai général de tactique had an enormous impact on the science of military strategy and was admired by George Washington, Frederick the Great and the young Napoleon Bonaparte. This marble bust remained in the Guibert family through 1918.

A further highlight is a beautifully carved pietra serena frieze by Francesco di Simone Ferrucci (1437-1493), a talented disciple of Verrocchio, which most likely adorned the lintel of a fireplace in the palazzo of a noble Florentine family circa 1460-1470 (est. $500/700,000). The present relief is centered by the coat of arms of the Tuscan counts, Guidi di Bagno, who were one of the largest and most powerful noble families in central Italy in the Middle Ages. A poignant South German limewood figure of the grieving Saint John from the workshop of Tilman Riemenschneider circa 1490 is estimated at $250/350,000. Riemenschneider was arguably the preeminent medieval German sculptor and this figure was probably carved for an altar. Few sculptures by Riemenschneider and his workshop remain in private hands.



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