Guilio Tadolini (d.1918) was a member of the famous family who for four generations, spanning some 150 years, occupied the same studio on the Via del Babuino, Rome. Guilio, of the third generation, took over the studio in 1892 on the death of his father Scipione. Having studied at the Academy of Art in Rome, Tadolini went on to become a pupil of Cesare Fracassini and Mariano Fortuny. His works include religious compositions, allegorical groups and numerous funerary monuments, among these, memorials to Victor Emmanuel at Perugia and Pope Leo XIII in the Church of St. John Lateran.

The present bust of a North African woman demonstrates Tadolini's effective use of combining bronze and marble, a popular vogue in Italian sculpture during the latter quarter of the nineteenth century and a technique employed by sculptors such as Pietrò Calvi (d.1884) and Luigi Pagani (d.1905). The contrasting combination of the whiteness of the marble and the dark patination of the bronze was ideally suited to the portrayal of African and Arab subjects, achieving a sense of realism hitherto unattained. The example here, originally cast in bronze by the Nelli foundry, forms part of a pair, the other being a nobleman, dressed similarly in elaborate cloth.

Another example, together with the Nobleman, cast in bronze and of the same dimensions, sold Christie's East, New York, 24th April 1990, lot 85.