A Kneeling Woman Bathing
Antonio Susini (active 1580 – 1628) after Giambologna (1529 – 1608)
Date: circa 1600
Place Made: Italy
Materials & Techniques: Cast and patinated bronze
Dimensions: 52 cm x 54 cm
Accession Number: The Holburne Museum, C904
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This is a small statue for a collector of statues to have in his house as an ornament. It shows a beautiful woman drying herself after a bath. She may remind you of the goddess of love, Venus, who appears in many artworks.
The statue is made of bronze, a metal which is an alloy (mixture) of copper and tin. It was made over 400 years ago in the Italian city of Florence. This object is of very high quality and was made by a master metalworker called Antonio Susini.
Believe it or not, the making of this sculpture took 9 stages and it would have started life as a clay or wax model! To find out more about how it was made visit the 'Fun with Metal' section where we show you all the processes it went through before it was finished.
The sculpture has a coating called a 'patina' which would have been a rich brown colour when it was originally made. In the 19th century another 'patina' coating was put on so it is a darker colour now than it would have been when it was first made.
Teachers' Information
This beautiful small bronze shows a bathing woman and was possibly modelled on a depiction of Venus, goddess of love. It dates from around 1580. Small bronzes were a speciality of Florence in the sixteenth century. At that time real ancient statuary was highly collectable but demand very much outran supply; bronzes such as this one would have helped to meet that need.
The work was created by the master metalworker Antonio Susini after the famed Flemish-born sculptor Giambologna. Giambologna settled in Italy and had a tremendous career under the Medici family who ruled Florence at that time. Susini was his technical director, known for the beauty of the finishes he brought to the bronzes. Here he adapts a successful small figure created by his master some time before 1584, the date of a version in the Bargello Museum in Florence signed FGB (Fecit GiamBologna). The lost wax method of bronze-casting is one of the most thrilling, dangerous and magical of techniques, casting a spell on sculptors ever since. Pupils can see an animation of this method in the 'Fun with Metal' section.
This figure surfaces in 1662 at the French Court in a list of objects bought by Louis XIV. It became No. 35 in the King’s famous art collection. It is very thin and light, but we can tell it was mounted in some way by the hole through the leg of the kneeling figure, which you can see by looking up through the base. It may have held a rod to keep her in place on a plinth: two studs underneath suggest she may have been fixed in some other way at a later date.
Even though we think of bronze as tough, this figure has lost a toe and a finger over the years, and its patina has been polished off deliberately.
Activities
1. Look at the Fun with Metals section so that your pupils can see how this bronze was made. Discuss with your pupils which bit of making this bronze they think is the most important for its success. Is it: Creating the original modello; making the mould; pouring the bronze in or finishing the surface? What would be the dangers involved in the process?
2. Do your pupils think a real person could do this pose? What would be difficult?
3. How many different surface textures can your pupils see in our pictures of the statue?