Lot Essay
The marble figure of the Muse of History, Clio, offered here is virtually identical to a marble in the former country residence of the Russian imperial family, Pavlovsk. The Pavlovsk marble, considered to be an authograph work by the German sculptor Johann Heinrich Dannecker, is thought to have been executed between 1785-9 and accompanies a series of Muses also attributed to Dannecker and copied after antique prototypes principally in the Musei Vaticani, Rome (see E. Ducamp, Pavlovsk - The Collections, Paris, 1993, pp. 87-90, nos. 35, 37-45.). The extreme closeness in style, detail and size between the Clio offered here and the Pavlovsk example supports an attribution of the present lot to Dannecker's workshop.