A Silvered Bronze Life-Cast of a Snake

Bronze with copper alloy, traces of silver
Italy
19th century
11 × 9 cm (4 ? × 3 ½ in.)

The appearance of the alloy and the surface treatment of this grass snake are very close to those of a brass serpent held in the Kunstkammer, no. 5907, at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, described as a life cast of Paduan origin from the late sixteenth century, in a tin-and-lead alloy with traces of silvering.

Although the present serpent, also silvered, though of a thick cast in a copper alloy, clearly refers to such Paduan casts, caution requires that it be regarded as a late Italian homage, probably from the second third of the nineteenth century.

Bronze serpents of this type, as was noted of a Paduan serpent of similar kind in the catalogue of the exhibition Natur und Antike in der Renaissance, ‘depart far from the naturalistic spirit of the Paduan humanist cabinets. They may therefore have served as paperweights.’

See Natur und Antike in der Renaissance, Frankfurt, 1986.