18th century, Tuscany, Putto with Dolphin

Tuscany, 18th century

Putto with dolphin

Marble, cm high. 55

The sculpture in question, crafted from fine marble, depicts a putto, or more precisely, a water sprite (perhaps a young Eros or a cupid), completely naked and with a plump physique. The marble, despite its coldness, is crafted to suggest the softness and fleshiness of the childlike figure, typical of the Renaissance and late-Renaissance ideal of beauty. The putto is immortalized in a dynamic and seemingly unstable pose, resting his right foot on a dolphin, often associated with Poseidon, which serves here as a base. This pursuit of dynamism and a pose that is not perfectly frontal was a distinctive trait of plastic art from the 16th century onward, anticipating the typically 18th-century predilection for the serpentine figure: the subject, in fact, features a slight contrapposto and a twisting of the torso, elements that accentuate the overall sense of movement. With her right hand, she holds a sort of receptacle above her head, suggesting its original function as a decorative fountain, while her left hand appears to be holding or embracing the dolphin's tail. Her face is smiling and playful, with thick curls and an expression of lively, childish innocence. Due to its shape, this type of sculpture may have been intended to embellish Medici villas and gardens, places where water and festive sculpture were key elements (as in the famous fountains of the Boboli Gardens). This joyful naturalism was a typical characteristic of the 18th-century Tuscan school, which drew inspiration from the timeless Florentine tradition of sculptors such as Andrea del Verrocchio and Giambologna. The 16th century in Tuscany was indeed a period of intense sculptural creativity, dominated first by the height of the Renaissance and then by Mannerism. Andrea del Verrocchio's bronze Putto with Dolphin, dating to around 1470 and housed in the Palazzo Vecchio, serves as an archetypal model for our sculpture, characterized by an extraordinary mobility conceived for the unstable pose of a fountain, initially intended for Villa Careggi. During the 16th century, sculptors such as Tribolo and Ammannati also populated the grand ducal fountains with countless putti and marine figures, often conceived not as individual masterpieces, but as elements of a complex hydraulic and allegorical machine.

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