Abstract

This article presents an ecocritical study of two types of small-scale bronze sculptures of semi-aquatic creatures from early-sixteenth-century Northeastern Italy: the bronze sea monster type, devised by the sculptor, modeller and marble carver Severo Calzetta da Ravenna, and bronze life casts of crabs, frogs and toads made in Padua. Just as art-historical discussions of sixteenth-century Paduan life casts have tended to emphasise developments in scientific knowledge of natural history (overlooking the sculptures’ affective and imaginative potential), the bronze sea monster type has been largely associated with the ‘fantastical’ (despite its connections with ‘real’ animals in early-sixteenth-century Italy). Taking as its starting point an understanding that both bronze types are, in fact, sculptural sites in which the ‘fantastical’ and the ‘real’ invariably converge, this article sets out to better understand their sensorial, imaginative and affective reception within the studiolo environment. It considers the bronzes’ immediate function as tools of writing (inkwells and sandboxes) or illumination (candlestick holders) as a mode of enjoyment closely attached to the commodity form, and the ways in which this allowed their viewer/handler to sensorially engage with materials, from which imagined networks of habitats, creatures and emotions could also emerge. By developing an ecocritical case study for understanding both imagined and real environments and animals in the art of early-sixteenth-century Northeastern Italy, this paper is also a contribution to the wider work of expanding art historical discussions of materials and object types towards a more ecologically-minded discourse.

Keywords: studiolo, sea-monster, Severo Calzetta, Pauda, Bronze sculpture