Hollow, indirect cast with thin, even walls. There are remnants of core pin wires inside, which were pierced through the lower arms and upper legs. A wax-to-wax join between torso and raised leg is visible in radiographs.¹¹F.G. Bewer, ‘Towards a History of Tetrode’s Casting Technique’, in F. Scholten et al., Willem van Tetrode, Sculptor (c. 1525-1580)/Guglielmo Fiammingo scultore, Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/New York (The Frick Collection) 2003, pp. 93-112, esp. pp. 102, 104 and fig. 113. Numerous casting flaws, porosity holes and repairs (e.g. to the fingers, neck and left arm). Carefully retouched, especially the face, hair and wings. There are remnants of a translucent reddish lacquer patina and a dark brown lacquer patina. The alloy consistency suggests a northern cast made before circa 1650.²²Observation A. Pappot, 13 December 2018.
Alloy tin bronze; copper with some impurities (Cu 93.92%; Sn 4.67%; Pb 0.68%; Fe 0.12%; Ni 0.2%; Ag 0.11%; Sb 0.14%; As 0.2%).³³The alloy consistency closely corresponds to that of Tetrode’s Mercury in a private collection in Boston, see the XRF report by Arie Pappot in the Object File.

F.G. Bewer, ‘Towards a History of Tetrode’s Casting Technique’, in F. Scholten et al., Willem van Tetrode, Sculptor (c. 1525-1580)/Guglielmo Fiammingo scultore, Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/New York (The Frick Collection) 2003, pp. 93-112; R. van Langh in F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, no. 34 on p. 165; R. van Langh, Technical Studies of Renaissance Bronzes: The Use of Neutron Imaging and Time-of-Flight Neutron Diffraction in the Studies of the Manufacture and Determination of Historical Copper and Alloys, 2012 (diss., University of Amsterdam), p. 39

Fractures around the neck and raised arm have been repaired with (historic) silver-based brazing.

…; from the dealer G. Cramer, The Hague, fl. 3,350, to the museum, 1953

Object number: BK-1953-19

This Mercury is one of at least six variations of this type,⁴⁴B. Jestaz, ‘À propos de Willem van Tetrode alias Guglielmo Fiammingo’, Revue de l’art 138 (2005), pp. 5-14. among others to be found in the Los Angeles County Museum,⁵⁵Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum, inv. no. AC 1996.28.1.1-2 (h. 53 cm); former collection Vincent Korda; sale London (Sotheby’s) 5 July 1990, no. 113. in the Louvre,⁶⁶Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. Th.65a. in the Frick Collection in New York (this bronze is adapted to a Perseus, who holds a sword and Argus’s severed head),⁷⁷New York, The Frick Collection, inv. no. 16.2.45. in a private collection in Boston and a bronze sold in 2008 on the German art market. This last work is likely identical to a version in the former Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, lost since 1945.⁸⁸My thanks to Arie Pappot for this observation, 13 December 2018. The most elaborate version is in the Bargello in Florence and is held to be the original model.⁹⁹Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, inv. no. 208 (h. 44.9 cm), see C. Acidini Luchinat et al., The Medici, Michelangelo and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence, exh. cat. Florence (Palazzo Strozzi)/Chicago (The Art Institute)/Detroit (The Detroit Institute of Arts) 2002-03, no. 88. This example was probably made by Willem van Tetrode (c. 1525-1580) around 1560-62 in association with the bronze statues for the Pitigliano scrittoio, a large display cabinet commended by Vasari as the sculptor’s magnum opus. The bronze could have been given to Cosimo I de’ Medici by Tetrode on the handing over of the scrittoio in June 1562, although there is no proof of this. That the statue was part of the cabinet itself, as Radcliffe and Avery believed, is unlikely.¹⁰¹⁰A. Radcliffe, ‘Schardt, Tetrode, and Some Possible Sculptural Sources for Goltzius’, in G. Cavalli-Björkman (ed.), Netherlandish Mannerism, Papers Given at a Symposium in Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, September 21-22, 1984, Stockholm 1985, pp. 97-108, esp. p. 104; C. Avery, Giambologna: The Complete Sculpture, Oxford 1987, p. 125; B. Jestaz, ‘À propos de Willem van Tetrode alias Guglielmo Fiammingo’, Revue de l’art 138 (2005), pp. 5-14, esp. pp. 6-8. In Vasari’s enumeration of works belonging to this group, he makes no mention of a Mercury. Moreover, this figure has no place in the decoration programme.

The Amsterdam bronze does indeed differ in pose from the Bargello model, but it has the same type of face and the same body modelling and can thus be attributed to the same hand. Mercury stands on his left leg, while the Bargello bronze stands on the right. The curve of the arms also differs, giving the Amsterdam statue a more elegant impression; essentially, seen from the side, his pose follows the lines of a letter ‘S’. Consequently, compared with the descending Mercury in Florence, his movement is more forward leaning, as if in flight. There are insufficient grounds for the older attribution of the bronze to the more obscure fiammingo Elia Candido (born Elias de Witte, active 1567-d. 1574),¹¹¹¹J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 199. or for the recent attribution of the version in the Louvre to the young Adriaen de Vries (1556-1626).¹²¹²B. Jestaz, ‘À propos de Willem van Tetrode alias Guglielmo Fiammingo’, Revue de l’art 138 (2005), pp. 5-14, esp. p. 12.

Undoubtedly, the sculptor adopted the theme of the Mercurio volante from his master, Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), who used it on the pedestal of his Perseus in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence. Tetrode was responsible for the execution of the bronzes adorning this pedestal around 1550-51, when employed by Cellini as an assistant.¹³¹³F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, pp. 13-14 and figs. 4-6, 93, esp. fig. 6 (Mercurio volante). In terms of the model, Tetrode’s version of the descending Mercury in the Bargello is also highly similar to Cellini’s large statue of Perseus. Cellini’s Mercurio volante, however, is placed in a niche of the pedestal and therefore conceived frontally, while Tetrode planned a three-dimensional bronze. In all probability, Giambologna’s work was more important for the creation of the flying Mercury. The version in Bologna of around 1562-64 is this sculptor’s earliest rendition of the theme.¹⁴¹⁴Bologna, Musei Civici d’Arte Antica: Museo Civico Medievale, inv. no. 1502, see A. Radcliffe, ‘Schardt, Tetrode, and Some Possible Sculptural Sources for Goltzius’, in G. Cavalli-Björkman (ed.), Netherlandish Mannerism, Papers Given at a Symposium in Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, September 21-22, 1984, Stockholm 1985, pp. 97-108, esp. p. 105; C. Avery, Giambologna: The Complete Sculpture, Oxford 1987, pp. 125-30 and fig. 125. Both artists were engaged more or less simultaneously in exploring the same ambitious subject. Whether there was any question of an artistic contest between the two sculptors – perhaps by order of Cosimo I, as Berger and Krahn suggested – cannot be proved.¹⁵¹⁵U. Berger and V. Krahn, Bronzen der Renaissance und des Barock: Katalog der Sammlung, coll. cat. Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) 1994, p. 160. Nor is it possible to establish whether Tetrode’s Mercury was the earlier of the two, as Radcliffe believed.¹⁶¹⁶A. Radcliffe, ‘Schardt, Tetrode, and Some Possible Sculptural Sources for Goltzius’, in G. Cavalli-Björkman (ed.), Netherlandish Mannerism, Papers Given at a Symposium in Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, September 21-22, 1984, Stockholm 1985, pp. 97-108, esp. p. 105. Initially, the two men devised their compositions quite differently: Tetrode’s earliest Mercury in the Bargello stands up straight, as if descending from the heavens, while Giambologna’s statue in Bologna makes a more upward or forward motion. In the Amsterdam variant, however, it appears Tetrode has incorporated a number of elements from Giambologna’s composition, for instance, by changing the god’s supporting leg from right to left and introducing forward motion, thus suggesting this variant was made after the Bargello version.

A mid-sixteenth century drawing of the interior of an art academy shows an anatomical model hanging by a rope in practically the same pose as Tetrode’s Bargello Mercury.¹⁷¹⁷London, British Museum, inv. no. SL,5214.2, see F. Scholten et al., Willem van Tetrode, Sculptor (c. 1525-1580)/Guglielmo Fiammingo scultore, Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/New York (The Frick Collection) 2003, fig. 41. This might indicate that his first composition was known in Florence in the 1560s. The drawing is by the Flemish artist Stradanus (born Jan van der Straet, 1523-1605), a compatriot of Tetrode and one of the founders of the Accademia del Disegno. A very finely cast reduction of the Bargello type is assumed to have been cast in Florence by Antonio Susini (active 1578-d. 1624).¹⁸¹⁸C. Avery, ‘Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Alexis Gregory Collection’, Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin 4 (1996) 1, no. 39. Tetrode took the original model of his Mercury with him to the North in 1567, where it rapidly spawned imitations. Together with Giambologna’s Mercury, Tetrode’s more static variant was echoed in southern Germany by Hubert Gerhard (c. 1540/50-before 1621), in a bronze (h. 93 cm), datable around 1594, formerly in the possession of the Von Stetten family in Augsburg (now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum), and a gilt bronze from 1587 by Carlo del Palagio (1540-1598) adorning the East Hall grotto fountain in the Munich Residenz.¹⁹¹⁹D. Diemer, Hubert Gerhard und Carlo di Cesare del Palagio: Bronzeplastiker der Spätrenaissance, 2 vols., Berlin 2004, vol. 1, pp. 178-81, 250-52, and vol. 2, nos. C4 and G 9. Tetrode himself developed yet another variant in about 1574 when he was in Cologne; this version is only known from an engraving by Adriaen de Weerdt (RP-P-OB-47.332). In addition Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) copied the Mercury in a design for his planets series engraved by Jacob Matham (RP-P-OB-27.159).²⁰²⁰A. Radcliffe, ‘Schardt, Tetrode, and Some Possible Sculptural Sources for Goltzius’, in G. Cavalli-Björkman (ed.), Netherlandish Mannerism, Papers Given at a Symposium in Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, September 21-22, 1984, Stockholm 1985, pp. 97-108, esp. fig. 12. There is a possibly seventeenth-century bronze reduction of the Mercury in Braunschweig, alongside a replica cast by Caspar von Turkelsteyn (1579-in or after 1648) in Brussels around 1630.²¹²¹Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, inv. nos. Bro 96 and 97, see U. Berger and V. Krahn, Bronzen der Renaissance und des Barock: Katalog der Sammlung, coll. cat. Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) 1994, nos. 119 and 120 and F. Scholten et al., Willem van Tetrode, Sculptor (c. 1525-1580)/Guglielmo Fiammingo scultore, Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/New York (The Frick Collection) 2003, nos. 9 and 10. By contrast there are only three known replicas of the Amsterdam type. Did Tetrode prefer his first, more innovative version when Giambologna’s Mercury quickly gained popularity?

Frits Scholten, 2024
An earlier version of this entry was published in F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, no. 34

J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 199, with earlier literature; A. Radcliffe, ‘Schardt, Tetrode, and Some Possible Sculptural Sources for Goltzius’, in G. Cavalli-Björkman (ed.), Netherlandish Mannerism, Papers Given at a Symposium in Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, September 21-22, 1984, Stockholm 1985, pp. 97-108, esp. pp. 104-05; J. Nijstad, ‘Willem Danielsz. van Tetrode’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 37 (1986), pp. 259-79, esp. p. 276, no. 32; C. Avery, Giambologna: The Complete Sculpture, London 1993, p. 125; U. Berger and V. Krahn, Bronzen der Renaissance und des Barock: Katalog der Sammlung, coll. cat. Braunschweig (Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum) 1994, nos. 119-20; C. Avery, ‘Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Alexis Gregory Collection’, Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin 4 (1996) 1, no. 39; S.W. Pyhrr, J.-A. Godoy and S. Leydi, Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaissance: Filippo Negroli and his Contemporaries, exh. cat. New York (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) 1998, no. 12; Levkoff 2002, p. 12; C. Acidini Luchinat et al., The Medici, Michelangelo and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence, exh. cat. Florence (Palazzo Strozzi)/Chicago (The Art Institute)/Detroit (The Detroit Institute of Arts) 2002-03, no. 88; E. van Binnebeke, Willem Danielsz. van Tetrode: De Delftse Praxiteles: Een studie naar het leven en het werk van een zestiende-eeuwse Nederlandse beeldhouwer, 2003 (unpublished diss., Utrecht University), no. 11; F. Scholten et al., Willem van Tetrode, Sculptor (c. 1525-1580)/Guglielmo Fiammingo scultore, Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum)/New York (The Frick Collection) 2003, pp. 102-04 and no. 8; B. Jestaz, ‘À propos de Willem van Tetrode alias Guglielmo Fiammingo’, Revue de l’art 138 (2005), pp. 5-14, esp. pp. 8-10; Scholten in F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, no. 34

F. Scholten, 2024, ' or and copy after Willem Danielsz. van Tetrode and , Mercury, Netherlands or Germany, c. 1560 - c. 1565', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20035628