After Johann Heinrich Von Dannecker

School of the 19th century. After JOHANN HEINRICH VON DANNECKER (Stuttgart, 1758 - 1841).
"Ariadne on a panther".
Marble.
Signed "Barsanti, Pise" on the base.
Measurements: 75 x 69,5 x 30 cm.

Exceptional neoclassical sculpture made from the original model, made by Johann Heinrich Von Dannecker around 1803-1824, a piece considered his masterpiece and one of the most important sculptures of the nineteenth century. Von Dannecker was a German sculptor trained with Philipp Jakob Scheffauer (1756-1808). In 1780 he traveled to Paris, Rome, Bologna and Mantua, expanding his sculptural knowledge, and returned to Stuttgart in 1790, where he worked as a teacher at the Hohe Karlsschule until 1794. In 1804, Von Dannecker made the first draft of "Ariadne on the Panther".

The sculpture shows us Ariadne nude on a panther, holding an expressively folded cloth in her hand, crowned with flowers and looking straight ahead. She is depicted next to a panther because, after being abandoned by Theseus, she is rescued by Dionysus (Bacchus) and becomes part of his world, and this god is strongly associated with wild animals such as panthers and leopards, which symbolize instinct, ecstasy and liberation; Thus, in art, the panther does not allude to Ariadne's own story, but functions as a Dionysian attribute that signals her transformation from abandoned princess to wife of a god and her integration into a freer, more irrational and divine universe.

In neoclassical art, both in sculpture and in the rest of the arts, there is a conflict resulting from the crossing of permanencies of the baroque tradition, subtle and elegant rococo motifs and novelties that have to do with the real and the ideal world of the models of classical perfection proposed by Winckelmann and collected by all. Perhaps the key to understanding neoclassicism lies precisely in Winckelmann, in his recommendations to artists to imitate the Greeks in order to become inimitable, and in that other sentence of the Prussian archaeologist according to which the sculptor, and the artist in general, should "sketch with fire and execute with phlegm". Likewise, Diderot advised artists to "paint as they spoke in Sparta", a principle of purification and synthesis that would lead to the tendency towards linear abstraction characteristic of the 1800s. In short, neoclassical sculpture was inspired by the Greco-Latin tradition through different points of view, adopting its principles of order, clarity, austerity, balance and purpose, often with a moralizing background. Based on rationalism, it emphasizes personal development and social progress through strong ethics, elements that blend with the growing scientific interest in classical antiquity as a result of archaeological excavations and the publication of scholarly studies on ancient art and culture.