A BRONZE FIGURE OF A REARING CENTAUR

Although Francesco Bertos was best known for his complex multi-figure groups in marble and bronze, he was also known to have produced a number of spontaneously modelled small-scale bronzes that Avery refers to as bozzetto-like miniatures (Avery, op. cit., p. 241, no. 155). The general form of the composition offered here and the physiognomy of the centaur relates closest to another model of a rearing centaur in a private collection, Milan, illustrated by Avery (ibid.), while the roughly modelled face is also comparable to that of Fame Writing History and to the allegorical figure in the group of Hylonome Supporting an Allegory of Chastity (the former with the Tomasso Brothers, Leeds, the latter's location unknown (Avery, op. cit., pls. 60 and 68 respectively).