Sprite (Mercury/Favonius)

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 Rustici's Mercury Taking Flight, originally atop a fountain in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

The statuette was executed by an anonymous Florentine sculptor close to Donatello.