The myrtle's altar

Details

Andrea Carlo Lucchesi (1860-1924)
The myrtle's altar
signed 'A C Lucchesi'
bronze, mid-brown and dark-green patina; on black marble plinth
14 5/8 in. (37.1 cm.) high, the bronze

Provenance

with Robert Bowman Ltd., London, 1996.

Literature

M. H. Spielmann, British Sculpture and Sculptors of To-Day, London, 1901, p. 74-5.
Exhibition catalogue, British Sculpture 1850-1914, London, The Fine Art Society, 1968, p. 28, no. 104 (another cast).
Exhibition catalogue, The Handley-Read Collection, London, Royal Academy of Arts, 1972, p. 110, no. F40 (another cast).
S. Beattie, The New Sculpture, New Haven and London, 1983, p. 177, pl. 182 (another cast) and p. 180.
Exhibition catalogue, Gibson to Gilbert, British Sculpture 1840-1910, London, The Fine Art Society, 1992, p. 56, no. 42 (another cast).

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium

Lot Essay

Considered by Spielmann to be Lucchesi's "best effort", The myrtle's altar was exhibited in plaster at the Royal Academy in 1899 and in bronze the following year. Modelled with a pose innovative among the New Sculptors, but recalling that of the Antique Barberini Faun, the sculpture continued Lucchesi's preoccupation with ideal depictions of the female figure, which he regarded as 'nature's masterpiece', and which had begun with The Waif, exhibited at the Academy in 1882.

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