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Title:
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Little Girl Sleeping
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Artist: |
Baron Carlo Marochetti
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This marble sculpture of a young girl, lying asleep on a small mattress, her legs crossed, and the upper part of her body raised on a velvet cushion, has been assumed to be a genre work. However, recent research by Caroline Hedengren-Dillen has revealed it to be a funerary or commemorative portrait of Marie-Jeanne-Catherine, daughter of Mario de Candia and his wife Giulia Grisi, probably the most famous opera performers of their day.(see "La Bimba dormiente de Carlo Marochetti:un portrait funéraire" on the website La Tribune de l'Art, 2012). The Journal des Artistes in its number for 28 July 1844 (2nd series, vol.I, issue 18, p.156) reported, "Mario de Candia recently lost a cherished child; M. Marochetti was commissioned by him to bring this child's features to life once again in marble. Lying on a velvet cushion, the child sleeps. Nothing so graceful as the child's pose, as its little figure". The sculpture was later described as forming part of the furnishings of Mario's "princely" house in the Rue d'Astorg in Paris (L'Artiste, 4th series, vol.3, 30 March 1845). Marie-Jeanne-Christine was born in June 1842 and died on 22 January 1844 (E.Forbes, Mario and Grisi. A Biography, London 1985, pp.57 and 65). The singer appears subsequently to have taken the sculpture back to his family home in Cagliari in Sardinia, and then to have left it to his nephew Stefano Roych. It was lent by Roych to the Turin Exhibition of 1898. It then came into the possession of the Sardinian industrialist Ercole Antico, from whom it was acquired by the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Turin, in 1902 (see Rosannna Maggio Serra, Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Torino. L'Ottocento. Catalogo delle Opere Esposte, Turin, 1993, p.106)
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Material(s): |
Marble
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Medium: |
Unassigned |
Finish: |
- |
Technique: |
Carved |
Genre: |
Unassigned
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Location: |
Turin, Galleria d'Arte Moderna, , Turin, Italy
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Colours: |
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Year: |
1844 |
Height: |
0.31 metres |
Width: |
0.49 metres |
Depth: |
91 metres |
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Key: |
4361 |
Acc. No.: |
4361 |
Col. No.: |
4361 |
Number of views: |
3703 |
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