The Hohenzollern Collection of Ancient Bronze Statuettes,
 
A large group of 27...

The Hohenzollern Collection of Ancient Bronze Statuettes,

A large group of 27 ancient bronze figures, principally figures of Heracles, with two brandishing a club in the raised right arm, 6.4cm high and 7.1cm high, another holding a club in the left arm, 6.7cm high; ten other examples all nude and variously with right arm upraised and with the lion skin draped over the left arm, 6.5cm 10.6cm high and two more naturalistic examples of nude Heracles, 8.4cm and 8.9cm high, Italic, circa 3^rd-2^nd Century B.C.; a nude bronze javelin thrower, the right arm raised and each hand formed into a fist, circa 5^th-4^th Century B.C., 8.6cm high and another of more schematic form, circa 6^th Century B.C., 8.4cm; an Etruscan bronze athlete, circa 5^th-4^th Century B.C., 7.5cm high; an Italic bronze figure of Poseidon or Taras, carrying dolphin or fish in the left arm, circa 4^th-3^rd Century B.C., 7cm; an Italic bronze discus thrower, 5^th-4^th Century B.C., 8.7cm; an Italic bronze figure of Mars, circa 3^rd-2^nd Century B.C., 9.3cm; a Roman bronze figure of Diana, 2^nd Century A.D., 6.3cm; a worn Roman bronze cupid, 1^st 3^rd Century A.D., 5.3cm; a worn Roman bronze herm, circa 1^st Century B.C./A.D., 6cm; two Roman bronze figures of the household god Lar, carrying a cornucopia, circa 1^st-2^nd Century A.D., 6cm and 6.6cm high and a lead figure of a putto, Roman or later, 13cm high (28)

Provenance: Hohenzollern Collection of Ancient Bronze Statuettes, Sigmaringen Castle, Germany

The Sigmaringen Hohenzollern Collections:

During WWII the imposing stronghold of Sigmaringen castle was taken over by the Wermacht and in 1944 it was briefly home to Marshal Petain and the remains of the Vichy government. The castle survives to this day and is still in the Hohenzollern family, although they no longer live there. War damages and a disastrous fire in more recent times have all taken their toll, especially on the family archives. The Sigmaringen Hohenzollerns were avid collectors of works of art, but today there are very few surviving records documenting their acquisitions. We thus know very little about how the group of classical bronzes here were originally put together beyond their presence in the 20th century in the Sigmaringen castle museum. The 1934 autobiography of Marie, wife of King Ferdinand I and Queen of Romania, mentions that just before her marriage in 1893, she visited Sigmaringen for the first time and suggests that the formation of the collection began in earnest in the 19th century with Prince Karl Anton (1811-1885), who appointed a series of scholarly curators. Leopold, Karl Anton's son, continued to enrich the collections and lived in the castle with his wife until his death in 1905. They spend much of their life together travelling through Italy, through Etruria and down into Campania, the very regions where many of the bronzes in the collection were produced in Classical times.

The bronzes were very likely accumulated from a number of sources. All of them are mounted on turned 19th and early 20th century wood stands of excellent quality, and most are the originals upon which each individual piece was displayed in the castle at Sigmaringen. What is evident from the family history of collecting is that the Hohenzollern interest in the acquisition of these charming bronzes lasted for a number of years and possibly generations.