How does Rothschild Bronzes elucidate its Provenance and Attribution?
The bronzes were exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universellein 1878 as the work of Michelangelo, although this attribution was disputed at the time. The works had been acquired the previous year in Venice by Baron Adolphe de Rothschild and Julie de Rothschild.When the Rothschilds' heir Maurice de Rothschild died in 1957, they were purchased by a French private collector. Over the years, the sculptures had been attributed to other artists, including Tiziano Aspetti, Jacopo Sansovino and Benvenuto Cellini, or their respective circles.
In 2002, they were again sold, at Sotheby's London to a British collector for £1.8m, as a mid sixteenth-century Florentine artist in the circle of Benvenuto Cellini. In 2003 they were lent by the new owner to an exhibition, Willem van Tetrode (c. 1525-1580), at the Frick Collection, New York, with an attribution to this Dutch sculptor. In 2012, they were exhibited at the Bronze exhibition held at the Royal Academy of Arts as mid sixteenth-century Roman.
Paul Joannides, an eminent scholar of Michelangelo's drawings, saw the bronzes in 2002 and was struck by their Michelangelesque qualities. Seeing the bronzes again in 2012, Joannides linked the sculptures to a drawing of a youth astride a leonine animal in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, a plausible copy of a lost work by Michelangelo. This resulted in the display of the bronzes in the Fitzwilliam in 2015, and an accompanying publication by Victoria Avery and Paul Joannides which argued that the bronzes were indeed by Michelangelo. The attribution rested on three planks: firstly, on the bronzes' link to the Montpellier drawing, secondly on their similarity in appearance to other works by Michelangelo, and, thirdly, on a neutron scan, conducted in Switzerland, which dated the bronzes to the first decade of the 16th century. The possibility that they might be by Michelangelo excited experts, particularly given that no autograph bronzes by Michelangelo are known to have survived. The display of the bronzes in the Fitzwilliam Museum coincided with a symposium on the bronzes held at the University of Cambridge in July 2015. A dissenting voice was provided by Frank Zöllner in Die Welt, a circumspect one by David Ekserdjian.
Jacopo Sansovino Royal Academy of Arts Maurice de Rothschild Benvenuto Cellini Adolphe de Rothschild Michelangelo Tiziano Aspetti University of Cambridge Frank Zöllner Fitzwilliam Museum Musée Fabre Sotheby's Paris Exposition Universelle