BY FRANCESCO GAJARINI, FLORENCE, DATED 1876

As a student of the l'Accademia di Belle Arti, Francesco Gajarini studied under the celebrated Florentine sculptors, Giovanni Bastianini and Lorenzo Bartolini. Though devoting much of his career to religious subject matter and portraiture, Gajarini was often commissioned for allegorical figures such the present lot. In the 1870s, the artist completed a suite of four figures similarly compositioned figured the Four Elements for a Mr. James M. Jacques of New York (A. de Gubernatis, Dizionario degli artisti italiani viventi, pittori, scultori e architetti, 1889, p. 212). A pair of figures, representing Air and Water, sold Christie's, New York, 28 April 2014, lot 37 ($60,000).