Striding Warrior (or ‘Mars Gravidus’)

Entry

This bronze figure of a Striding Warrior was acquired by the Rijksmuseum in 1958, together with a bronze of Pallas Athena by Campagna or Roccatagliata (BK-1959-2) then thought to be a work by the Dutch sculptor Adriaen van der Schardt (1530-c. 1581). Only shortly before, the Striding Warrior had in actuality been purchased from a major German private collection as a work ‘after Giambologna’ by the dealer Cramer, who then presented the bronze to the museum as a Netherlandish work. This is confirmed in Cramer’s letter of 29 August 1958 to the then director of the Rijksmuseum, Röell, for whom the two bronzes were being held on reserve: ‘I would be greatly pleased if I could also meet with de Heer Leeuwenberg in the coming days in Delft to show him both Netherlandish bronzes, which I had reserved for you.’² Illustrative of developments in the study of Netherlandish bronze sculpture is the fact that, by 1973, Leeuwenberg no longer considered the Pallas Athena to be a work by Van der Schardt or even an Italian bronze, but instead attributing it to Hubert Gerhard (c. 1540/50-1620), with the Striding Warrior ascribed to Lorenzo Mattieli (1682-1748), an Italian sculptor active in Dresden.³ Enjoying broad consensus to the present day, however, is Radcliffe’s 1985 attribution of the Striding Warrior to the Netherlandish sculptor Willem van Tetrode (c. 1525-1580),⁴ with the Rijksmuseum bronze rightly linked to the bronze group of Hercules and Eurytion (or Theseus and Bienor) in the Smith collection⁵ and the Hercules and Antaeus in the Victoria and Albert Museum.⁶ Together with the Hercules Pomarius (BK-1954-23), these four works constitute the core of Van Tetrode’s oeuvre and clearly convey the influence of the sculptor’s many years in Italy.

The identity of the nude striding man or warrior is unclear. At some point, he held a weapon in his right hand; only one of the five surviving versions of this bronze still has the original haft.⁷ Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617) based his engraving of the Roman hero Calphurnius on Tetrode’s model, equipping the figure with a sword.⁸ Nevertheless, he turned to the same model for his rendering of Saturn, which shows the god with a sceptre.⁹ The present bronze warrior also possibly had a second attribute, in the form of an object on the head: at least two of the six versions has a minuscule hole in the back of the head.¹⁰ Discernible on the bronze in the Hearn Family Trust is a small circular discolouration. Conceivably, this warrior may have had a crown like that worn by Saturn in Goltzius’s engraving.¹¹ Wengraf recently posited that Tetrode adapted the various individual body parts and attributes he modelled, enabling them to be used for works other than the sculpture for which they were initially intended.¹² This scenario, however, is improbable: X-radiographs of three of the versions show no wax-to-wax joins between the head and body, though they do appear at the arms and legs.¹³ In Wengraf’s estimation, the Hearn Family Trust bronze, which shows clear evidence of once having worn a crown, could very well have been a Jupiter or Saturn;¹⁴ those lacking a crown, however, he identifies as Mars Gravidus,¹⁵ thus alluding to the possible influence of Ammannati’s more-than-life-size bronze Mars Gravidus from 1559-60, today in the Uffizi.¹⁶ Tetrode could very well have been familiar with this work, despite its limited public exposure.

A more probable, readily accessible source of inspiration for the Striding Warrior, however, was a life-size marble warrior in the collection of Cardinal Farnese.¹⁷ Tetrode’s invention can be seen as an emulation of this classical marble, further indicating that the bronze’s model was developed during his sojourn in Italy (before 1567). In all probability, Tetrode was active for a period of time in the artistic milieu centred on the cardinal, given the manifest echoes of classical sculpture from the Farnese collection encountered in his work.¹⁸ Tetrode’s Striding Warrior’s pose is similar that of his Jupiter, which he produced in Cologne. This sculpture survives today in an engraving from 1574 by De Weert,¹⁹ but also in a bronze version recently attributed to Tetrode.²⁰ All of these works demonstrate the sculptor’s predilection for rendering figures in expansive, spatial poses, with extended limbs and elaborately waving locks of hair.

The Striding Warrior’s composition also raises questions concerning Tetrode’s artistic relation to Giambologna. As with the sculptors’ respective versions of the Flying Mercury (cf. BK-1953-10), the model of the present bronze and Giambologna’s Mars are compositionally and thematically closely linked. In both cases, however, the question of who influenced whom cannot be resolved with certainty, even if Tetrode’s model – with its terminus ante quem of 1575 versus 1587 for the Mars – appears to imply that he is the most likely inventor.²¹

Six bronze versions of the Striding Warrior are known to survive today. Three are virtually equal in qualitative terms, two of which are held in New York private collections, and one – ostensibly the most refined in its casting and finishing – was last seen on the Paris art market.²² The three remaining casts – the present Rijksmuseum version, a bronze in Milan²³ and a cast in the Hill Collection – display less refinement.²⁴ Given that the respective measurements of all these works differ only slightly, with no more than minor variations observable in the poses, a clear chronological determination becomes impossible.

Excepting the bronze from the Paris art market, all of the versions originally had an integrally cast base, as is true of a number of other bronzes attributed to Tetrode. In the case of the Milanese and Hill Collection bronzes, this base has been removed. The rather unusual inclusion of a flat, integrally cast base may indicate a common origin in one specific foundry. A comparison of all these versions also shows that the sculptor introduced minor compositional variations by slightly turning the head and torso.²⁵

Frits Scholten, 2025
This entry is an updated version of Scholten in F. Scholten, M. Verber et al., From Vulcan’s Forge: Bronzes from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 1450-1800, exh. cat. London (Daniel Katz Ltd.)/Vienna (Liechtenstein Museum) 2005-06, no. 33