Giuseppe Domenico Grandi (1843-1894) trained under Vincenzo Vela at the Brera Academy in Milan and at the Tabacchi Academy in Turin. He was a sculptor, painter and engraver. At the age of seventeen he won the competition for the Monument to Cesare Beccaria, which he completed in 1871 and established his reputation. During the 1870s Grandi developed his interest in the Impressionist technique, particularly through his friendship with the painters Tranquillo Cremona and Daniele Ranzoni. As a result of this Grandi produced a series of small portrait statuettes in which he sought to capture the 'impressionist' effects of light on form. Grandi's most renowned work is his Monumento alle Cinque Giornate in Milan, which took him fourteen years to complete, and which reveals a novel rhythmic cohesion of sculpture and architecture. He represents one of the most significant of 19th Century Italian sculptors and a precursor of the Impressionist sculptors, in particular Medardo Rosso and Paul Troubetzkoy.
His 1880 maquette for the Monument to Marshall Ney reveals his strong style and impressionist interest. His technique was worked by a swift and spontaneous application of small pieces of clay, effects which were transferred with freshness onto plaster and bronze casts. The lost-wax bronze cast of the Marshall Ney accurately displays Grandi's fine modulation of surface and form. The intended monument was never realised, but the maquette became instantly popular and was cast in several versions, and also executed in marble for the artist's friend Carlo Borghi. It represents Grandi's innovative application of the painterly interest in the dissolution of form by light, as well as being a sensitive portrait of the flamboyante and heroic Napoleonic Marshall.