拍品專文
Executed in 1868, the present life-size marble group entitled I Pompeiani was one of Benzoni's most celebrated works. The subject-matter for the group derives in part from the historical novel The Last Days of Pompeii, by Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1834), but also from Benzoni's own vivid imagination provoked by his own visits to the cities devastated by the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Explaining the source of his inspiration, Benzoni wrote:
"Had I had the plaster in my hands I would have modelled this group which formed in my mind at the sight of that immense calamity on the spot. As soon as I returned to Rome I worked manically with a fever induced by the image of that horrendous event. I seemed to hear the terrible rumbling issuing from the summit of the mountain in whose bowels lay the fiery betrayal. I read the descriptions of those terrible days, but nobody's account left its mark as had my few hours spent among the ruins". The profound affect that what he saw at Pompeii had on Benzoni is evident in his compassionate and sensitive depiction of the young Pompeian family fleeing from their home: the man shielding his wife from the molten lava with a sheet, she in turn protecting her baby, personal effects of day to day life broken and scattered on the ground, forgotten in the chaos.
The original terracotta model of I Pompeiani is still in the collection of the Caffi family, relations of Benzoni living in his native province of Bergamo. Although it does not appear that the original life-size marble group was commissioned by anyone in particular, at its unveiling in Rome the work was received very enthusiastically by the public and as a result an uncertain number of copies was commissioned by wealthy Roman families. One of these remained unfinished in Benzoni's studio on his death in 1873. By the 1880s, the present group was in the collection of the prominent New York hoteliers, Mr and Mrs Paran Stevens and following the sale of their estate in 1895, was displayed in the foyer of the former Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, on Fifth Avenue.
"Had I had the plaster in my hands I would have modelled this group which formed in my mind at the sight of that immense calamity on the spot. As soon as I returned to Rome I worked manically with a fever induced by the image of that horrendous event. I seemed to hear the terrible rumbling issuing from the summit of the mountain in whose bowels lay the fiery betrayal. I read the descriptions of those terrible days, but nobody's account left its mark as had my few hours spent among the ruins". The profound affect that what he saw at Pompeii had on Benzoni is evident in his compassionate and sensitive depiction of the young Pompeian family fleeing from their home: the man shielding his wife from the molten lava with a sheet, she in turn protecting her baby, personal effects of day to day life broken and scattered on the ground, forgotten in the chaos.
The original terracotta model of I Pompeiani is still in the collection of the Caffi family, relations of Benzoni living in his native province of Bergamo. Although it does not appear that the original life-size marble group was commissioned by anyone in particular, at its unveiling in Rome the work was received very enthusiastically by the public and as a result an uncertain number of copies was commissioned by wealthy Roman families. One of these remained unfinished in Benzoni's studio on his death in 1873. By the 1880s, the present group was in the collection of the prominent New York hoteliers, Mr and Mrs Paran Stevens and following the sale of their estate in 1895, was displayed in the foyer of the former Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, on Fifth Avenue.