1052 - Boccacci Cremona, bronze statuette after the Victoria of Calvatone on marble base, probably 1933/45

Boccacci Cremona, bronze statuette after the Victoria of Calvatone on marble base, probably 1933/45 Bronze and marble, statuette of the Roman goddess of victory Victoria, replica of the Victoria of Calvatone, Fonderia artistica Luigi Boccacci, Cremona, probably 1933 to 1945. On the reverse foundry mark in relief “L. BOCCACCI FONDERIA ARTISTICA CREMONA”. Winged Victoria balancing on the celestial globe, headband in the pinned-up hair, girded chiton with a cloth knotted over the left shoulder, right arm stretched forward, a palm branch in the left hand; globe with three-line inscription “VICTORIAE AVG ANTONINI ET VERI SATRIVS MAIOR”; on a black-and-white speckled marble cube, on the side an engraved Italian dedication by the Podestà of Cremona. Condition commensurate with age, right hand bumped. H. 46 cm The Victoria of Calvatone is a 1.70 m high gilt bronze statue of the Roman Imperial period, which was found in four parts at Calvatone near Cremona in 1836 and acquired in 1841 by Gustav Friedrich Waagen for the Berlin collection of antiquities. The inscription on the globe dedicates the statue to the goddess of victory of the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, who ruled jointly from 161 to 169 AD; the donor was Marcus Satrius Maior, the occasion probably the Parthian War of Lucius Verus. During its time on display in Berlin until 1939 copies were made, which went to Rome, Cremona and Moscow, among other places. The original, lost since 1945, was rediscovered in 2016 in the Hermitage in St Petersburg and exhibited there in 2019. Between 1926 and 1945 Podestà was the title of the mayor of an Italian town appointed by decree. The Fonderia artistica Luigi Boccacci in Cremona, founded in 1933 by the chaser Luigi Boccacci and run by the family until 2011, cast bronze sculptures, monuments and funerary monuments in the lost-wax process for sculptors from Cremona, Lombardy and abroad.