Goat
- Object belonging
- One's own
- Category
- Bronze sculpture
- City
- Rome
- Location
- Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia
- Specific location
- Room 17
- Inventory
- PV 09597
- Material and technique
- Bronze, patina, lacquer
- Author
- Paduan School
- Dating
- Late 15th-early 16th century
- Dimensions
- 6.4 x 8.3 x 2.9 cm.
- Origin
- Castel Sant’Angelo (1936); Museo delle Terme Diocleziane; until 1886 Biblioteca Vallicelliana; Oratorian Fathers (1662); Museo di curiosità of Virgilio Spada (1596-1662).
- Image copyright
- SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma
Short description
This bronze has been badly damaged: both the feet and horns are missing. Although the goat’s forequarters have almost entirely disappeared, it is possible to sense how its front legs were bent at the knees; the back legs are cut off underneath the body. In complete examples of the sculpture, the goat stands almost upright on it front legs, which are outstretched as if about to jump. The artist’s intention to express the strength and movement of the animal is somewhat compromised here by the poor state of conservation, but the movement of the goat can still be made out in its head, which is turned to the left, and in the long, flowing fleece, which seems to follows the animal’s movement.
Pietro Cannata
Bibliography
F. Hermanin, Il Palazzo di Venezia, Rome 1948, p. 299; A. Santangelo, Museo di Palazzo Venezia, Catalogo delle sculture, Rome 1956, p. 8; G. Finocchiaro Il museo di curiosità di Virgilio Spada: una raccolta romana del Seicento, Rome 1999, pp. 108 and 216.
