Follower of Barthélemy Prieur (French, 1540-1611), a fine patinated bronze model of Adonis, portrayed nude and standing contrapposto, holding a spear and a hunting horn, his right foot resting on a rock issuing from the integral square section base, raised on a further stepped black and white marble plinth, 18.5cm high overall Provenance: Formerly the Charles Avery Collection Until sold at Bonhams Knightsbridge, 11 December 2007, lot 500 Where acquired by a private collector The bronze presented here, particularly the subject's distinctive facial features and delicately rendered musculature, shows the influence of Court sculptor Prieur, France's main and most important proponent of the Italianate tradition of small-scale, secular cabinet bronzes. Comparisons could particularly be drawn between the present bronze and Prieur's celebrated renditions of other young, male mythological figures such as Narcissus and Bacchus. While the examples cited above are closely related in subject, stylistically the bronze offered here could be compared to the figure of a man drawing a sword in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (24.212.11), which is ascribed to Prieur. A similar model of a gladiator, dated to circa 1600, with closer parallels to the present model in patination and handling, is in the collection of the V&A, London (A.63-1925). Prieur's gladiator model is thought to have derived from statuettes by the Florentine sculptor Domenico Poggini. A model of a nude warrior, with similar pose to the present lot as well as subtle rockwork below the feet, catalogued as in Poggini's style, is illustrated in Wilhelm von Bode, Collection of J. Pierpont Morgan: Bronzes of the Renaissance and Subsequent periods, Paris, 1910. vol. II, plate XCII.