Late 19th C. Neapolitan Brass Cupid with Dolphin - Grand Tour, After

Southern Europe, Italy, Naples, Grand Tour. A winged Cupid stands poised upon a stepped circular base, a plump dolphin gathered in his arms and lifted toward his shoulder as though caught mid-play. Cast in brass and finished with an archaeological green patina deliberately conjuring the verdigris of ancient excavated bronzes, the figure descends from the celebrated 'Amore con Delfino' fountain group. The boy-god's topknot, soft musculature, and the dolphin's curling tail are rendered with the fluency of a workshop steeped in copying the antique. Cupid, god of love, is repeatedly paired with the dolphin as an emblem of love's swiftness, the creature darting and vanishing as desire so often does. Conceived as a decorative cabinet bronze for the Grand Tour traveler, the piece distills a famed Pompeian discovery into intimate, mantel-scaled form. The model derives from an antique fountain statue unearthed at the Thermae (baths) of Pompeii in 1880 and now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (inv. no. 111701). The distinctive "Pompeian" green patination, applied to evoke genuine excavated antiquities, points to the renowned Neapolitan foundry of Chiurazzi, celebrated for its reproductions after the antique. The foundry's 1910 catalogue lists a model of "Amore con Delfino per fontana" (Love with Dolphin for a fountain), offered in two sizes. Such bronzes and brasses fed the brisk Grand Tour souvenir trade, allowing travelers to carry home a fragment of Pompeii's rediscovered splendor. Item # 203294

Estimate:$125

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