Lot Essay
Vittorio Caradossi was born in Florence and studied sculpture under Rivalta at the Beaux-Arts Academy in his native city. Commissioned to execute a number of public monuments, Caradossi is most remembered for his celebrated monument to the Renaissance artist Desiderio da Settignano, the model for which was exhibited at the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition. In contrast to these municipal works, Caradossi also composed a number of marvellously abandoned female nudes, such as his Dolce Far Niente, Three Nereids, Dusk and the present figure A Moon Nymph Admiring Her Own Reflection. Echoing the sensuality of his predecessors Pradier and Clésinger, who portrayed their nymphs in a similar attitude of abandon, Caradossi's work, some decades later, exhibits a greater humour and modernity, partly dispelling the rather severe voluptuosness of the former and evident here in the coquettish pose of the Moon Nymph.