Saint Simon of Trent: A New Discovery at the Getty

This essay presents conservatory and iconographic evidence for a new identification of a marble bust in the Getty Museum’s collections. The unusual object, hitherto identified as the early Christian child martyr Saint Cyricus, bears marks which indicate that it is in fact the only known marble portrait of Simon of Trent, a 2-year-old Christian boy whose dead body was found on Easter 1475 in a sewer underneath a Jewish family's house in Trent, Italy. What followed is known as one of the most appalling blood libels against Jews in Early Modern Europe. The incident set in motion an unprecedented visual and written propaganda, which – with the help of the printing press – quickly established a major cult around the alleged child “martyr.” The Getty bust, a portrait of the dead child in the pose of a triumphant martyr, must have played a significant role in Simon’s quickly spreading cult in late fifteenth century Europe.

Of exceptional quality is a small bronze portrait bust of Augustus in a private American collection (fig. 1-5) that has not previously been formally published (1). This image is less than one-third life-size : the height from the chin to the top of the head is 8.5 cm ; the total height of the bust, 15.5 cm (2). The surface of the bronze is largely covered with a dark green patina with some lighter green patina mixed in. Both the outer and inner surfaces look as though they were cleaned in modern times. There is a large crack in the left side of the neck running down onto the back of the bust and a crescent-shaped crack on the hair at the back of the head, as well as small casting holes in the right back side of the hair and a large square casting hole on the apex of the head. The entire bottom section of the plastron (" bib ") of the bust looks as though it had been added along an irregular crack, but this imperfection appears to be part of the original casting rather than a repair. Traces of some applied pointed tool and of a blunt instrument in the surface of the bronze along the line of the break suggest that before the bust was cast a section of wax broke off the bottom of the plastron and a new wax section was pressed into place. Toward the center of the plastron a rectangular piece of copper was added after the bust was cast to mask a large casting flaw. In addition to traces of filing around the patch, there are vertical scrapings from the use of a strigil all around the base of the neck almost to the back right side and on the lower right cheek. To the right of the nape of the neck are copper-colored filing marks. The head is strongly averted to its (proper) right side. Except for the knitted brow and the prominent horizontal furrows creasing the forehead, the face is strongly idealized. The eyes are large and striking, with the iris of each eye in the form of an incised circle. In the right eye the pupils are rendered as two small pointed depressions ; in the left eye, as only one. The nose is aquiline ; the mouth and chin are small ; and the neck is long and graceful-looking. The hair locks are (1) I thank the owner for allowing me to publish this important bronze sculpture. This bust was briefly mentioned in passing with one view (fig. 2) in an exhibition catalogue : In Celebration : Works of Art from the Collections of Princeton Alumni and Friends of the The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, 1997, p. 20, cat. 20. (2) Maximum width of head at the level of the forehead = 7 cm ; depth of head from tip of nose to back of head = 7.5 cm ; width of plastron (bib) across top = 8 cm ; height of plastron from top of right shoulder to bottom = 6 cm.

This article presents an in depth examination of three freestanding life-size portrait busts of the young Charles V in Belgian collections, respectively in the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, the Gruuthuuse collection in Bruges and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, and of one bust in the collection of the MuseoNacionalColegio de San Gregorio in Valladolid, Spain.The striking similarity between these different portrait busts of Charles V could not be denied but up until now no thorough materialtechnicalstudy had been carried out. The aim of this preliminary study is to obtain some answers concerning materialtechnical data and the chronological relationship between these busts. Special attention was paid to their authenticity.

Complete technical report by Rachel Sabino with contributions from Lorenzo Lazzarini follows the comprehensive curatorial essay by Karen Manchester.

Metropolitan Museum Journal, 1995

Busts o f Children i n Quattrocento Florence ARNOLD VICTOR COONIN Rutgers University HE FOLLOWING STUDY concerns one of the most beloved but least investigated artistic productions of the early Renaissance: sculpted busts of young children (Figures 1, 3, 5, 7, 15, 16).1 The sculptures form a homogeneous group-exclusively male, always depicted bustlength, usually in marble, and often portrayed as the young St. John the Baptist.2 The boys are characterized individually, and no two are exactly alike in either form or expression. They first appear in Florence in the mid-fifteenth century and center on the workshops of Desiderio da Settignano, Antonio Rossellino, and Mino da Fiesole.3 There are no comparable painted counterparts, and the genre has a production span of only about fifty years.4 The busts thereby constitute an extraordinary genre of sculptural production and of childhood representation whose striking yet brief existence has always been enjoyed but never adequately explained.5 These portrait busts are unique to the Renaissance. Antique busts of children do exist but are of a nature contrary to those created in Quattrocento Florence. Roman busts of children normally exhibit none of the liveliness that makes the Renaissance examples so distinctive and charming. The ancient busts are usually filled with sober dignity, without the spontaneity and vivaciousness of childhood itself. As once characterized by Anton Hekler, the Roman busts "show us no blooming, healthy little boys, no merry putti with fat cheeks and delicious snub-noses; the atmosphere of the Roman boy in portraits is not a sunny one; it is oppressive, and full of somber gravity."6 The Metropolitan Museum possesses three important examples of these classical busts of children. A marble bust of a young boy (Figure 2) shows the typical austerity of most classical portrait busts and is an example of the type that would have been most familiar to Renaissance artists.7 A unique bronze bust in the Museum (Figure 4) exhibits more vitality as a result of the expressive ? The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1995 METROPOLITAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 30

Complete technical report by Rachel Sabino with contributions from Lorenzo Lazzarini follows the comprehensive curatorial essay by Katharine A. Raff.

Complete technical report by Rachel Sabino with contributions from Lorenzo Lazzarini follows the comprehensive curatorial essay by Katharine A. Raff.

Complete technical report by Rachel Sabino with contributions from Lorenzo Lazzarini follows the comprehensive curatorial essay by Katharine A. Raff.