Joseph de Levis and Company

Regular price €49.99
Regular price €50.99 Sale Sale price €49.99
16th sixteenth 17th seventeenth century
A01=Charles Avery
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
antique
art history
artefact
Author_Charles Avery
automatic-update
catalogue raisonne
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=ACND
Category=AFKB
Category=AGA
church-bell church bell
collectable
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
door-knocker
dynasty
early baroque style
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
firedog
inkstand
italy
jewish family business
Language_English
Mannerist
miniature table-bell table bell
mortar
PA=Available
perfume-burner
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
sculpture
softlaunch
statuette

Product details

  • ISBN 9781781300480
  • Weight: 1408g
  • Dimensions: 212 x 274mm
  • Publication Date: 15 Sep 2016
  • Publisher: Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days

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Joseph de Levis and Company tells the compelling story of an Italian family of sixteenth-century Jewish bronze-artists.

Between 1577 and 1605, Joseph de Levis applied his distinctive signature to a whole range of fantastic Mannerist bronze artefacts, some 45 in all. They range from large church-bells - some still in situ - and miniature table-bells, to mortars, inkstands, perfume-burners, door-knockers, firedogs, statuettes, and even a portrait-bust.

Joseph's sons and nephews continued the family business into the seventeenth century, signing a similar range of artefacts in an early Baroque style. Around this core of guaranteed work a corpus of reasonable attributions may be made on stylistic and circumstantial grounds, giving a total of 140 items.

The book provides a unique cross-section of the production of a hard-working and resilient renaissance foundry. Frequently inscriptions and coats-of-arms specify a wide-ranging clientele, from civic and church authorities, to guilds and confraternities (all-important in society at the time), nobility, merchants and connoisseur-collectors.

Bronzes by the De Levis dynasty are now dispersed among museums in Europe, the USA and Israel. They are also found in Old Master collections, notably that of the late Robert H. Smith, whose foundation purchased in 2002 the eye-catching Ewer from the Salomon de Rothschild Foundation in Paris for GBP276,000.

This well-illustrated catalogue raisonne is important both art-historically and from the perspective of the Jewish Diaspora in Renaissance Italy.

Dr Charles Avery is a specialist on European sculpture, particularly Italian, French, English and Flemish. A graduate of Cambridge University and the Courtauld Institute of Art he later obtained a doctorate from Cambridge. He is a Cavaliere of the Order of Merit of Italy, and has been a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a Trustee of the British-Italian Society. He was Deputy Keeper of Sculpture at the Victoria & Albert Museum for twelve years and a Director of Christie's and since 1990 has been an independent historian, writer and lecturer. His published works include Giambologna: The Complete Sculpture; Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in the Frick Art Museum; Donatello: An Introduction; David Le Marchand (1674-1726): 'An Ingenious Man for Carving in Ivory'; Bernini, Genius of the Baroque and The Triumph of Motion: Francesco Bertos (1678-1741).