The Sculpture Museum - Catalog - Page 37
THE CIECHANOWIECKI MASTER, 17th century
8
Dying Gaul
After the Antique
Gilt bronze
10 cm (4 in.) high
18 cm (7 in.) wide
9 cm (3½ in.) deep
provenance
Private collection, France
With its meticulous attention to detail, and the finely worked surface, the
present bronze displays strong formal similarities with an extensive group
of bronzes, mostly gilded, attributed to the anonymous sculptor referred to
as the ‘Ciechanowiecki Master’, after Count Andrew Ciechanowiecki (1924–
2015). Ciechanowiecki, who was the first to identify this artist’s distinctive
style, associated the master with the Augsburg goldsmith and sculptor David
Schwestermüller (1596–1678), who certainly may have seen such small-scale
sculptures during his apprenticeship in Italy. Over the years, the many attempts
that have been made to identify the master range broadly, from Adriaen de Vries,
Camelio and Franco-Flemish, third quarter of the seventeenth century, to the
most recent identification of the master as an artist active in late sixteenth-century
Rome (Leither-Jasper and Wengraf 2004, p. 250).
fig. 1
Roman, 1st–2nd century ad,
Dying Gaul, marble
Rome, Musei Capitolini,
inv. no. MC0747
