Beschreibung:

A pair of Continental patinated bronze models of men, called the good and the bad thief, after models attributed to Michelangelo, late 19th/early 20th century, the truncated bodies loosely modelled overall, one model portrayed with head inclined to sinister, the other to dexter, mounted on associated circular metal socles 27 and 26cm high overall respectively CATALOGUE NOTES: The model on the left was probably cast after a wax model of Gestas, the Impenitent thief, often credited to renowned Florentine sculptor Michelangelo. A sixteenth-century cast of this model is illustrated in W. Bode, The Italian Bronze Statuettes of the Renaissance, M.A.S. de Reinis, New York, 1980, Plate CXXXIV, then in the collection of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin. Though the model itself is sadly lost, several drawings by Michelangelo relating to crucifixion groups exist in museum collections. See for example British Museum 1860,0616.3, which shows one of the thieves in a similar pose. The extant drawings of this crucifixion group however, as well as the rare complete groups after Michelangelo with Christ and both thieves present (including, for example, a late 16th/early 17th century example at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession number 37.28ad, and one in terracotta sold at Sotheby's London, 6 July 2006, lot 144) show that the second model in the present lot may not be as closely related to the same project. The slumped shoulders and bearded visage put this figure more in line with other works by the Renaissance master, including a terracotta torso in the collection of the British Museum (1859,0719.1), which was made in preparation for the unfinished marble sculpture of the Bearded Slave (commissioned for the tomb of Pope Julius II) now at the Accademia in Florence