Adriaen de Vries (1550-1626)
Mythological Figure Supporting the Globe
Masterpiece by Adriaen de Vries at Christie’s ‘Mythological Figure Supporting the Globe‘, a previously unrecorded bronze by Mannerist sculptor Adriaen de Vries (1550-1626), will be auctioned at Christie’s London on 7 July 2011. The work is estimated to realise between £5 million and £8 million]]>
June 15th, 2011, source: Christie’s / theartwolf.com
The 43 inches (109cm) high bronze was discovered last year on a routine Christie’s valuation, and it will be the star of Christie’s “Exceptional Sale” of Decorative Arts on 7 July 2011.
According to Ronald Johnston, Christie’s International Head of Sculpture, the work “has the potential to become the most valuable piece of early European sculpture ever sold“. It does not sound unrealistic at all: in 1989, a smaller work by de Vries -“The Dancing Fawn“- was sold to the Getty Museum for £6.8 million, then an auction record for a piece of European sculpture.
The work is a superb example of Adriaen de Vries’ later style. According to the press note published by Christie’s, “in his abstraction of the human form de Vries can be said to parallel the work of his contemporary, El Greco, who also discarded many of the conventional artistic canons of the Renaissance and Mannerist periods“.
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