Joseph de Levis and Company - Renaissance Bronze-Founders in Verona

Joseph de Levis applied his distinctive signature (between 1577 and 1605) 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. This book provides a unique cross-section of the production of a hard-working and resilient renaissance foundry. Frequently inscriptions and coats-of-arms specify his 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, and 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.

List of contents

Preface and acknowledgements

1.Fortuna Critica
2.Historiography
3.Biography
4.Signatures and Family Identity
5.Joseph's oeuvre
(a)Plaques of the Deposition
(b)Church-bells, table-bells, and mortars
(c)Figure compositions
(d)Joseph's sons and nephews
6.Joseph's background and the origins of his style
7.Bell-casting
8.Church-bells
9.Table-bells

Product details

• Authors: Charles Avery
• Publisher: Wilson, Philip Publishers
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.09.2016
• EAN: 9781781300480
• ISBN: 978-1-78130-048-0
• No. of pages: 240
• Dimensions: 212 mm x 274 mm x 25 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Plastic arts; Social sciences, law, business; Verona, ART / History / Renaissance, ANTIQUES & COLLECTIBLES / Art, sculpture, Italy, History of Art, 17th century, c 1600 to c 1699, Mannerism, baroque, Renaissance art, Art & design styles: Baroque, Renaissance style, c 1500 to c 1600, C 1600 To C 1700, European history: Renaissance, Later 16th century c 1550 to c 1599