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*57 casting (Washington 1986, 51-57). He was a spe- likely to date from his employment in the Italian
Adriano Fiorentino cialist in bronze casting, working not only as a courts during the early and mid-i49os.
(Adriano di Giovanni de' Maestri) sculptor but also as a medalist and canon-founder. Unlike Antico's reduced replicas and recon-
Florentine, c. 1415/1416-1499 This statuette, cast solid with a hollow base, he structions of known Roman statues, Adriano's The
to his technical
attests
1486
expertise.
sense.
figures are "antique" only in a general
After
VENUS worked in Naples for Virginio Orsini, the condot- open and relaxed pose of his Venus does not seem
tiere f and for the Aragonese court, where he por- to imitate any of the Roman statues of Venus
c. 1492 trayed the poet Giovanni Pontano. He was well known to the Renaissance, but, like Botticelli's
bronze regarded in Gonzaga circles at Mantua and in pictures of Venus, remakes antiquity through the
5
height (including base) 42.2 (i6 /s)
references: Fabriczy 1903; Florence 1986; Urbino and his small bronzes did much to pro- artist's imagination. Adriano probably followed
Washington 1986, 51-57 mote the connoisseur's taste for nudes in the the prototype of Botticelli's Birth of Venus in
antique style, which Antico was to satisfy so his portrayal of the goddess on a shell, while the
Philadelphia Museum of Art effectively with his statuettes. In 1498, motif of her wringing water from her wet hair
while at the court of Emperor Maximilian i, was probably inspired by a description of the clas-
Adriano's formative experiences as a sculptor Adriano executed a bust of Frederick the Wise, sical Greek artist Apelles' famed painting of the
occurred when he worked in Florence with Elector of Saxony (Grimes Gewolbe, Dresden). newborn Venus arising from the waves, her body
Bertoldo di Giovanni (cat. 164), whose bronze Adriano died the following year. Although a glistening. Adriano's statuette is the finest early
of Bellerophon Taming Pegasus (Kunsthis- number of his bronzes are signed, the chronology example of this genre of hedonistic art, which was
toriches Museum, Vienna) he was responsible for of his works is unclear. The present statuette is to become so popular in courts throughout Europe.
M.K.
158
Lucas Cranach the Elder
German, 1472-1553
NYMPH OF THE SACRED WELL
c. 1537
oil on panel
48.5 X 72.9 (19 X 28 /2)
I
references: Kurz 1953; Liebman 1968; Basel 1974;
MacDougall 1975; Suida and Shapley 1975;
Friedldnder 1978; Leeman 1984
National Gallery of Art, Washington
In 1504 Cranach entered the service of Frederick
the Wise, Elector of Saxony, and he was to spend
nearly fifty prosperous years in Wittenberg in the
service of successive rulers of Saxony, producing
a large number of altarpieces, smaller religious
paintings, portraits, secular images, and prints.
The first of his images of the female nude appears
to be the Venus and Cupid of 1509 in Leningrad
(Friedlander 1978, no. 22), in which the figures
are more rounded and overtly Italianate than in
his later and more characteristic images. Frederick
employed the Italian artists Adriano Fiorentino
(cat. 157) and Jacopo de'Barbari, both of whom
portrayed graceful female nudes in the antique
style, and they appear to have exercised a decisive
influence on Cranach's conception of female
beauty, although his translation of their vision
was highly idiosyncratic. He later produced a sub-
stantial number of such subjects, including Lucre-
tia, The Judgment of Paris, and Venus with Cupid
the Honey-Thief, regularly working slight varia-
tions on the same theme. The Latin inscriptions
on a number of the paintings reflect the humanist
learning at the court of Saxony. The librarian of
EUROPE AND THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 259
