SECOND HALF 19TH CENTURY

These magnificent statuary busts of monumental scale are exemplary of the Lombardo–Veneto school of orientalist sculpture popularised from the 17th century. The art and architecture of Venice, Europe’s maritime gateway to Turkey, the Levant and North Africa for more than a millennium, is imbued with an dazzling array of influences. Venetian sculptors were inspired by the merchants and different peoples, and the luxuriant and colourful materials and commodities traded – silks, spices, marbles and precious stones – to create arresting figural sculpture in multicoloured marbles and alabasters. The present examples can be distinguished by their scale, vibrant colours, clothes, jewellery and, especially, mounted as they are atop columns swathed in drapery.
Enchanted by the heady mix of Venice, visiting Grand Tourists disseminated throughout Europe these exotic depictions which demonstrated both their owner's wealth and taste, but also the reach of their cultured and extensive travels. Decorative busts of this type were prized in the collection of Cardinal Richelieu as early as 1643 and constituted important decorative elements of the residences of 18th and 19th century connoisseurs. By the second half of the 19th century they became de rigueur decoration for the great interiors of the Gilded Age. A pair of Venetian marble busts in the collection of Baron Mayer Amschel de Rothschild at Mentmore Towers are illustrated in a watercolour of the Grand Hall by H. Brewer in 1863. In the Wallace Collection there are busts stated to be Italian, 17th/18th century of an African King with plumed headdress and bust of an African man and Woman in marble and jasper (J.G. Mann, Wallace Collection Catalogues, Sculpture, London, 1931, plate 4 & 5, S17 & S19). A pair of closely related busts dating to the 19th century, facially identical and presumably from the same workshop, but without the pedestals which accompany the present pair, sold Christie’s, Paris, 19 June 2018, lot 120 (122,500€).