Tomasso Brothers to exhibit major pieces of sculpture at TEFAF Maastricht

This will be the first time that Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, the internationally-renowned dealers in European sculpture, has exhibited at TEFAF which celebrates its Silver Jubilee in 2012. Stand 165

The bronze figure by Giovanni Francesco Susini is a tour-de-force and is priced in the region of €750,000. Susini was a Florentine sculptor who trained in the workshop of Giambologna, one of the most important Mannerist sculptors in Italy , where his uncle Antonio Susini was the principal bronze-caster. Visiting Rome in 1624-26, he gained experience of classical antique statuary including, presumably, the colossal marble group of the Farnese Bull.

The largest single sculpture ever recovered from antiquity, the Farnese Bull, probably a Roman copy of a Greek original, was carved from a single block of white marble and is attributed to two artists from Rhodes, Apollonius of Tralles and his brother Tauriscus. Found in 1546 in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome and acquired soon after for the Farnese collection, it is now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples . Zethus and Amphion, the twin builders of Thebes , are shown tying their stepmother Dirce to the horns of a wild bull to punish her for tormenting their mother, Antiope, a subject taken from Greek mythology.