ANTIONIO FRILLI (ITALIAN, FL. LATE 19TH CENTURY), AFTER THE ANTIQUE

First recorded in 1665, when Albert Rubens listed it as in the collection of the Grand Duke of Tuscany in Florence, the present life-scale model of Dancing faun by the prolific studio of Antonio Frilli is characteristic of the 18th and 19th century fascination with the Antique. Together with other Florentine workshops of the late 19th century, Frilli's studio specialized in the genre, producing finely-carved replicas of the great discoveries of Antiquity, including the present work, Venus de Medici and Venus Italica, among others. The original Dancing Faun was in the Tribuna of the Uffizi and by September 1800 had been sent to Palermo along with other treasures to avoid plunder by the French army, but it was returned to the Tribuna in 1803. Further versions were excavated in Rome in the 1630s, and casts were made of the Uffizi faun from the 1680s.