Statuette

This model was traditionally believed to be by Michelangelo, who is shown holding a version of it on the podium relief of the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens. It is more likely that the model developed out of the study of Michelangelo's ignudi (nude athletes) on the Sistine Ceiling and the antique sculpture known as the Belvedere Torso (Vatican Museum) which influenced them. A bronze version which appeared in the 1764 sale of the Stosch Collection (Florence) was said in the catalogue to have been the original from which wax casts were made. There is another wax version in the Staatliche Museum, Berlin Dahlem and a plaster cast in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris.