This is a bronze inkstand made in Italy in ca. 1510-1550 by the workshop of Severo da Ravenna. The object is formed by a dragon in full relief with the pedestal ornamented with terminal figures and garlands.
Severo da Ravenna (active about 1496-1543) was an Italian sculptor. His father, Domenico Calzetta, was probably a sculptor, and he may have been related to the two painters of the same name working in the circle of Mantegna in Padua: Pietro Calzetta (c. 1455–?86) and Francesco Calzetta ( fl 1492–1500). Severo appears to have divided his time between Padua, Ferrara and Ravenna, where he was first recorded in 1496. From 1511, when he made statues for the visit to Ravenna of Pope Julius II, he appears to have remained in that city; the last notice of him there is in 1525. Severo’s only securely documented work is the signed, ascetic marble figure of St John the Baptist, commissioned in 1500 for the entrance to the chapel of S Antonio in Il Santo, Padua (in situ). In his treatise De sculptura (1504), the Neapolitan art theorist Pomponius Gauricus singled out Severo for special mention at the end of his section on bronze sculpture, suggesting that by that date he was an established bronze sculptor, although no specific work is mentioned.