19Th Century French Borghese Gladiator Bronze Of Large Scale

A finely cast large scale bronze of the Borghese Gladiator with exceptional patina

French c.1830-50

Due to the particularly fine casting of our piece, it seems likely that it is a French-made rather than Italian bronze though it is difficult to be entirely certain of its origin. Our piece has an exceptional patina and stands on a veneered marble base. The Borghese Gladiator quickly became one of the "must see" items on a wealthy visitor's Grand Tour with fine life size and smaller reductions of the piece in some of the most important houses in the world. One was the centrepiece of the sculpture collection at Wilton House, a house renowned for the quality of its sculptural holdings, until this was given to Sir Robeert Walpole who installed it at Houghton. Other versions are at Petworth, Knole and Windsor Castle and there are references showing that Thomas Jefferson imagined a copy of the piece as the ideal centrepiece for a sculpture gallery at Monticello.

The piece appears in a number of important paintings, a particularly evocative example being a work by Joseph Wright of Derby showing a group of connoisseurs inspecting a reduction of the figure on a table by candlelight.

Our bronze figure, of large size, depicts a swordsman, missing his sword as is the case with the original sculpture, probably in the process of defending himself against a mounted assailant. The original sculpture was incorrectly restored at one point and made to look like a gladiator with a small shield and sword which have since been removed but the gladiatorial name has stuck despite it being factually inaccurate.

The original bronze is signed by Agasias, son of Dositheus, of whom nothing else is known. It is believed to have been made around 100 BC in Ephesus. The piece once formed part of the collections in the Borghese Villa in Rome until it was sold, under some duress, to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807. At that point it was removed to Paris and is now in the Louvre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borghese_Gladiator#/media/File:Three_Persons_Viewing_the_Gladiator_by_Candlelight.jpg

We are delighted to be able to offer this fine example.