The Saccomazzone Players
Giovanni Francesco Susini (1585–1653)
after
Orazio Mochi (1571–1625)
2nd quarter of the 17th century
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Giovanni Francesco Susini, familiarly known as Gianfrancesco, was one of the supreme manufacturers of bronze statuettes of the entire seventeenth century. The vast majority of his statuettes and groups fall into one of three categories: either they are his own inventions, reductions after the antique, or versions of works by Giambologna, the greatest sculptor of the half-century or so between the death of Michelangelo and the rise of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
For that reason, the present piece is something of an anomaly. It is based upon a stone group in the Boboli Gardens in Florence, seemingly dating from the second decade of the seventeenth century, which was begun by Orazio Mochi and completed by Romolo Ferrucci del Tadda, neither of whom is exactly a household name. And yet it is not hard to see why it might have occurred to someone to produce a small-scale, domestic version of it in bronze. ‘Saccomazzone’ – which literally means ‘bundle of sacks‘ – is a game somewhat along the same lines as ‘Are you there Moriarty?’, involving two blindfolded players, whose left hands cannot be removed from a rock or stone. One of them tries to hit his opponent, and the other seeks to evade his blows, while both make bird-noises to distract the enemy. There are other bronzes based upon Mochi’s original model, but the present group is unique in setting the action upon a small, integrally cast oval plinth, which only serves to increase the sense of the protagonists’ off-balance writhing.
- Material/technique
- bronze with golden-brown lacquer patina
- Measurements
- 32 × 45 × 32 cm
- Acquisition
- presumably acquired in 1658 by Prince Karl Eusebius I von Liechtenstein
- Currently exhibited
- Garden Palace, permanent presentation
- Artists/makers/authors
- Giovanni Francesco Susini
- after Orazio Mochi
- Inventory number
- SK 602
- Signature/inscriptions content only available in German
- bez. unten links: I. E.
- Provenance
- first mentioned in the Guardaroba inventory of Prince Karl Eusebius I von Liechtenstein, dated 1658, presumably acquired in 1658 by Prince Karl Eusebius I von Liechtenstein
- Place of origin
- Florence
- Iconography
- Player
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