Lenin’s desk. A sunken bomber. One extraordinary ape.
A bronze chimpanzee contemplating a human skull. A casting on Lenin’s desk. Another recovered from a Nazi bomber at the bottom of an Austrian lake, to the surprise of divers searching for bullion. Hugo Rheinhold’s Affe mit Schädel has led an astonishing life since its Berlin debut in 1893.
But the strangest discoveries are in the sculpture itself. Why is a page of the Bible torn away? What is the ape measuring with its callipers? And who, exactly, is examining whom? There is even a question about the ape itself: is Rheinhold’s famous ape actually female?
A remarkable sculpture, made to be lived with.
More than 130 years after Hugo Rheinhold first exhibited Affe mit Schädel, the sculpture continues in bronze.
Each Edinburgh example is individually commissioned, cast and finished by Powderhall Bronze. Years of careful refinement have concentrated on preserving the expression, detail and character of Rheinhold’s extraordinary original.
Whether it finds a place in a library, a study or a private collection, this is a sculpture that rewards a lifetime of looking.
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“Eritis sicut Deus”
The surviving words on the open page: “Ye shall be as God”. The rest of the Genesis quotation is visibly torn away.