The quintessentially Renaissance taste for bronze statuettes through the work of one of its stars
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Palazzo Venezia holds a notable collection of small-scale bronze statues that range from the Renaissance to the end of the 18th century. This small bronze statue, exhibited in the Palazzetto, depicting a Billy Goat, represents a beautiful piece of work by Andrea Briosco, known as il Riccio (1470-1532), who probably made it in the second decade of the sixteenth century.
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Like other sculptors working with bronze in Padua at the time, animals were often his subject matter. For this piece, the artist potentially was referring to Greco-Roman figurative or literary heritage: the billy goat is a recurring element in Dionysian mythology, as reported by Herodotus, Euripides and even Horace. However, there is no reason to exclude an alternative or parallel reference to the Old Testament: the sheared body, except for a few locks of wool on its pelt, and the presence of a laurel branch between its horns could allude to the annual rite of sacrifice that Moses ordered the Israelites to adopt.
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The Billy Goat was part of the large collection of small bronze statues once owned by the Roman art dealer Alfredo Barsanti: as such, it was transferred to Palazzo Venezia in 1934.