The Emperor Hadrian, c. 1550

West Building, Main Floor — West Sculpture Hall

Medium

bronze

Dimensions

overall: 72.7 x 63.8 x 41.1 cm (28 5/8 x 25 1/8 x 16 3/16 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Stanley Mortimer

Accession Number

1945.16.1

Artists / Makers

Ludovico Lombardo (artist) Venetian, 1507/1508 - 1575

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Provenance

Stanley Mortimer [1897-1984], New York, and Litchfield, Connecticut;[1] gift 1948 to NGA.

[1] Stanley Mortimer probably inherited the sculpture from his father, also Stanley Mortimer, who was a portrait painter and who in the 1890s built a sixty-room English Tudor manor house on his estate on Long Island and filled it with Renaissance art. (See Steven M.L. Aronson, "A Life in the Country: Patrician bohemians Barbara and Stanley Mortimer look back on a charmed circle of family and friends," House and Garden [April 1984]: 165-171, 230, 232.)

Associated Names

Mortimer, Stanley

Bibliography

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 161, as Bust of a Roman Emperor (Hadrian).

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 142, repro., as Bust of a Roman Emperor (Hadrian).

1984: Aronson, Steven M. L. "A Life in the Country." House and Garden (1984): 230.

1994: Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1994: 138, repro.

1995: Marani, Pietro C. "The Hammer Lecture (1994): Trivoli, Hadrian and Antinous, New Evidence of Leonardo's Relation to the Antique." Achademia Leonardi Vinci 8 (1995): 217, repro.

2003: Boström, Antonia. "Ludovico Lombardo and the Taste for the all'Antica Bust in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome." Large Bronzes in the Renaissance. Peta Motture, ed. Studies in the History of Art 64, Symposium Papers 41 (2003): repro. 154, 165, 166 fig. 13, 178 nn. 65 and 69.

2004: Luchs, Alison. "Lombardo Family." In The Encyclopedia of Sculpture, Antonia Boström, ed. 3 vols. New York and London, 2004: 2:972.

2007: Avery, Victoria. "The Production, Display and Reception of Bronze Heads and Busts in Renaissance Venice and Padua: Surrogate Antiques." In Jeanette Kohl and Rebecca Müller, eds. Kopf/Bild: Die Büste in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Berlin, 2007: 82.

2008: Bacchi, Andrea and Luciana Giacomelli, eds Rinascimento e passione per l'antico: Andrea Riccio e il suo tempo. Exh. cat. Castello di Buonconsiglio. Trento, 2008: 528.

2008: Penny, Nicholas. "The Evolution of the Plinth, Pedestal, and Socle." In Collecting Sculpture in Early Modern Europe. Nicholas Penny and Eike D. Schmidt, eds. Studies in the History of Art 70, Symposium Papers 47 (2008): 467, 469, fig. 15.