The Tomasso Brothers are a family richly endowed with great sensitivity to sculpture. They strive to deal in excellence, acquiring bronzes, marbles, terracottas, waxes and ivories which they show in critically acclaimed and enormously successful exhibitions and accompany with intelligent and lively catalogues. This is the third in their series of such catalogues, and accompanies an exhibition at the Otto Naumann gallery, New York. The content is a carefully selected range of works from the early Renaissance to the Neo-Classical period. Many of the entries epitomize the artistic tastes and cultural ideals of their time and provide us with a rich visual journey through 500 years of sculpture. Works include a rare and significant, early plaque of Madonna and Child by Luca della Robbia; a gilt bronze masterpiece of Cupid astride a Dolphin by Francesco di Virgilio Fanelli; a Farnese Bull by Giovanni Francesco Susini; an unusual and eye-catching terracotta, previously unpublished, of a black man in ragged clothes by Joseph Willems; and a highly original bust of the Emperor Caracalla by Joseph Claus, a milestone in the development of early Roman neoclassicism.
