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Raffaello Monti studied sculpture with his
father, Gaetano Monti of Ravenna, at the
Imperial Academy. He made his debut early
and won a Gold Medal for his group entitled
Alexander Taming Bucephalus. He and other
young sculptors soon became identified as
belonging to the Scuola Lombarda, a group
associated with a reaction against the severity
of the neoclassicism that dominated Italian
sculpture in the first half of the 19th century.
After periods spent working successfully in
Vienna and once again in Milan, he made his
first visit to England in 1846, but returned to
Italy in 1847 to join the Popular Party and
became one of the chief officers of the
National Guard. After the disastrous failure of
the Risorgimento campaigns of 1848, he was
forced to flee from Italy to England where he
was to remain for the rest of his life .
His career in England was extremely
successful and prolific. The Great Exhibition of
1851 occurred only a few years after his
arrival, and his reputation was largely built on
the works he exhibited. His Eve After the Fall,
awarded a prize medal, was particularly well
received, but two other sculptures in the
exhibition, the Circassia Slave and a Vestal
Virgin established features that were to
become his trade mark: the delicate rendering
in solid marble of figures swathed in
transparent veils. A Vestal Virgin,
commissioned in 1847 by the Duke of
Devonshire before the exhibition, and the
dramatic The Sleep of Sorrow and the Dream
of Joy, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum,
are examples of such pieces, some of which
became popular through reproduction in
Parian ceramic.
This bust, though one of a type, is particularly
finely composed and delicately carved.
Although she does not wear a wreath of
flowers, this young woman, with the modest
tilt of her head and the veil with its elaborate
lace border and scattered rose sprays almost
drawn onto the material, suggests a bride
rather than a Vestal Virgin. Often, the image
of a veiled woman was intended to embody
Italia, in the same manner in which Britannia
symbolized England, Hibernia symbolized
Ireland, and Lady Liberty symbolized the
United States.
- (CK.0269)
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