Bronze Statuette of a Bathing Girl by Giambologna

Bathing Girl, after Giambologna.
Bronze, porphyry.
Italy or France.
Early 17th century.
h. 4,9 in. (without the base) ; 7,4 in. (with porphyry base).

The posture of this statuette is a variation of the 'figure nude, standing and turning back, about to cleanse the right foot which she has put on a three-sided socle', identified as a Bathing girl or Bather and attributed to Giambologna by Wilhelm von Bode in Alfred Beit’s collections (Wilhelm von Bode, The Art Collection of Mr. Alfred Beit at his residence, Park Lane, London, London, p. 62), then Otto Beit’s, where this time the bather is said to be ‘about to remove a thorn from her foot’ (Wilhelm von Bode, Catalogue of the Collection of Pictures and Bronzes in the Possession of Mr. Otto Beit, London, 1913, p. 106).

Of this Giambologna’s Bathing Girl, described by Bode himself as ‘frequently met with’ (ibid.), several versions are known : one in the Metropolitan Museum, of which ‘the model is not known’ (Charles Avery and Anthony Radcliffe, Giambologna. Sculptor to the Medici, London, 1978, p. 67), attributed to Antonio Susini. Here, the Bathing Girl, turned into a Venus, has Cupid next to her : according to Charles Avery and Anthony Radcliffe, this change seems to be Antonio Susini’s addition.

Another Bathing Girl is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, probably a later cast compared to the Metropolitan’s, and was attributed to Giambologna by Bode, although it had previously been attributed, more prudently, to the school of Gianbologna (ibid.), which goes along well with an Antonio Susini’s hypothesis.

There are, however, versions on the same model anterior to the addition of a Cupid by a follower of Giambologna or by Antonio Susini. This is already the case, of course, of the bronze identified by Bode in the collections of Alfred and then Otto Beit, but it is also true of a 'Bathing Girl, with knee on stool' mentioned by Charles Avery and Anthony Radcliffe : a version even more rare, held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon when Avery and Radcliffe’s book was written. This version still differs from ours in that the right foot rests once again on a tripod ; but the modeling of the face, compared with that in the Metropolitan and in the Ashmolean, brings the Dijon Bathing Girl and our own very close to one another.

All these variations on the Bathing Girl, ours as well as that of the Ashmolean, the Metropolitan, that of the Beaux-Arts de Dijon, and yet another one, less refined than the rest and which must likely be somewhat remote from Giambologna, now held at the Victoria & Albert Museum. All of those share a characteristic crease between the right arm and breast of the Bathing Girl.

However, the absence of both a Cupid and a tripod suggests an earlier date for our Bathing Girl, as the examples in the Victoria & Albert Museum and even the one in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon were cast in a single piece. Versions of the Bathing Girl without both a Cupid and a tripod must have existed before those additions.

Sources

Wilhelm von Bode, The Art Collection of Mr. Alfred Beit at his residence, 26 Park Lane, London, Londres, 1904 ; Wilhelm von Bode, Catalogue of the Collection of Pictures and Bronzes in the Possession of Mr. Otto Beit, Londres, 1913 ; Charles Avery et Anthony Radcliffe, Giambologna. Sculptor to the Medici, Londres, 1978.