# Sprite \(Mercury/Favonius\) [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [UNKNOWN MASTER, Italian]() - Date: 1401-1450 - Technique: Gilt bronze, height 62 cm ## Commentary Sprite \(Mercury/Favonius\) c. 1432 Gilt bronze, height 62 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Originally, this bronze statuette was a fountain figure. The water once flowed up through the left leg and torso to spout out of the open mouth. It is supposed that it is connected with a fountain constructed in the garden of the Casa Vecchia, a Medici edifice that preceded the Palazzo Vecchio on the Via Larga in Florence. The pose of the statuette resembles to Giovanni Francesco <a onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/r/rustici/fountain.html'\)" href="/html/r/rustici/fountain.html">Rustici's Mercury Taking Flight,</a> originally atop a fountain in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. The statuette was executed by an anonymous Florentine sculptor close to Donatello. ## Related artworks - [A Bishop Saint]() - [A Curious Scene]() - [Adam and Eve; Cain and Abel]() - [Adoration of St Mark]() - [Allegorical Portrait of Dante]() - [Altar frontal]() - [Altarpiece \(detail\)]() - [Altarpiece of St Clare \(detail\)]() - [Altarpiece of St Clare \(detail\)]() - [Altarpiece of St Clare]() - [Altarpiece of the Magi]() - [Altarpiece]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()