Severo (Calzetta) da Ravenna or Severo di Domenico Calzetta (active ca 1496 – ca 1543) was an Italian sculptor of the
High Renaissance
In art history, the High Renaissance was a short period of the most exceptional artistic production in the Italian states, particularly Rome, capital of the Papal States, and in Florence, during the Italian Renaissance. Most art historians stat ...
and
Mannerism
Mannerism is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, when the Baroque style largely replaced it ...
, who worked in Padua, where he is likely to have finished his training, in Ferrara and in Ravenna, where he first appears in a document of 1496. Though Severo specialized in small bronzes, his only securely documented work is the marble ''St John the Baptist'', signed by him, which was commissioned in 1500 for the entrance to the chapel of St Anthony in the Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua and remains in place. Though he produced religious figures, such as the ''Corpus'' from a crucifix in the Cleveland Museum of Art, his main subjects were pagan, including dragons and satyrs, and functional objects, such as inkwells, candlesticks, and oil lamps. Pomponius Gauricus mentions Severo in his chapter on bronzes in ''De sculptura'' (1504), without identifying any subjects.
A mark of his convincing style ''all'antica'' is the fact that a bronze bust of a bearded man wearing a toga in the collection of the Rijksmuseum was long considered to be a Roman bronze. And a mark of the difficulty of attributions is the fact that it is attributed to Severo or to Tullio Lombardo
Illustration.
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Some works
*''Neptune on a Sea Monster'', c. 1500-10, bronze. Detroit Institute of Art
*''Saint Christopher Carrying the Christ Child with the Globe of the World'' (c. 1500/1509) The two figures had become separated, and their identities unrecognized, the ''Christopher'' mistaken for an Atlas (Louvre) and the Christ Child for a boy with a ball (National Gallery), until detective work by art historian Bertrand Jestaz reunited the
*''Saint Sebastian'', c 1520, bronze (National Gallery of Art, Washington D
illustration.
One o
nine bronzes
in the National Gallery.
Notes
References
*Pope-Hennessy, John W. ''Renaissance Bronzes from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Reliefs, Plaquettes, Statuettes, Utensils and Mortars.'' London, 1965: no. 527.
Further reading
* Patrick M. de Winter, 1986. "Recent Acquisitions of Italian Renaissance Decorative Arts. Part I: Incorporating Notes on the Sculptor Severo da Ravenna" ''The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art'' (March 1986).
External links
Cleveland Museum of Art: seven bronzes attributed to SeveroEuropean sculpture and metalwork
a collection catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Severo Calzetta (see index)
{{Authority control
16th-century Italian sculptors
Italian male sculptors