Drunken Satyr. From an archaeological motif. Black patinated bronze. Naples, 18th-19th century.

46 x 53 x 24 cm

The large bronze sculpture presented here depicts a drunken satyr.

The original was found during the excavations of Herculaneum in 1754, in the Villa of the Papyri, together with other exceptional sculptures.

It is currently kept in the Archaeological Museum of Naples and was recently restored for an exhibition at the Getty Archaeological Museum, Malibu, at the expense of the foundation.
Other iconic sculptures, such as the runners, also found in Herculaneum, were lent to the exhibition.

The life-size subject was immediately replicated in bronze due to the exceptional nature of the find and also due to the evident indelicacy of the subject, which aroused curiosity: an old, drunken satyr, reclining and ithyphallic...

This subject also appears in the catalogue of the Chiurazzi foundry of Naples in the second half of the 19th century.

Our bronze has truly remarkable, if not exceptional, dimensions compared to the small replicas that usually pass through the antiques market.

The quality of execution and the strong materiality of the artefact also go beyond the workshop copies made in later periods by excellent nineteenth-century artistic foundries.

Based on these estimates, it is thought to have been made in the second half of the 18th century or the early part of the following century, therefore before the birth of the well-known Neapolitan artistic foundries.

Finally, it should be noted that ancient replicas of the subject are known, even before the discovery of Herculaneum, in a work by Titian. Therefore, similar models were circulating even before the 18th century.

An object for refined collectors, who do not disdain great decoration.