BY RAFFAELO ROMANELLI (1856-1928)

To satisfy the demands of a healthy export market, particularly to England and America, a number of 19th century Italian sculptors such as Pietro Barzanti and Cesare Lapini set up their own galleries to retail contemporary subjects and high quality copies of Antique sculpture. Founded by Pasquale Romanelli (d.1887), the Galleria Romanelli operated as one of these highly prolific studios in Florence beginning in the second half of the 19th Century. In 1861, the art critic Theodosia Trollope visited the Romanelli studio and her contemporary review provides a fascinating account of the successful workshop (The Art Journal, 1861, pp. 263-4). Son Raffaelo Romanelli (d.1928), and then grandson Romano (d.1969), continued the lofty reputation first established by Pasquale.