Italian or French, 18th century

These elegant personifications of river gods show a young man and a bearded older man reclining on urns from which their respective rivers flow: the archetypal representation of rivers in western art. The bronzes are ultimately indebted to Michelangelo's iconic languid representations of Night and Day, Dusk and Dawn made for the Sagrestia Nuova in the Basilica di San Lorenzo in Florence. They also owe a debt to the two iconic ancient representations of the River Nile (Vatican Museums, Rome) and the River Tiber (Musée du Louvre, Paris). The conception of the younger river god recalls idealised youths by Giambologna, such as his Apollo in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. However, the present figures bear some resemblance to Barthélémy Prieur's languid male nudes from the funerary monument to Christophe de Thou (1508-1582) in the Louvre (inv. nos. 
MR1684; MR1685; MR2116; RF4405;RF4406), which could possibly indicate a French origin for the present bronzes.