|
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)
|
