Psyche

Ferdinando Vichi was a well-established sculptor in Florence during the Belle Époque. He took an interest in art at an early age and entered the Academy in Florence. At the turn of the century, classically trained sculptors working and teaching in Florence including Vichi, Ferdinando Andreini and Vittorio Caradossi were employing classical techniques and operating in the ‘new style’. Often associated with the prolific Bazzanti Gallery, these sculptors imbued idealized figures with stylistic elements invoking a neo-rococo emphasis on the delicate, the ornate and the feminine allegory. Many of these works feature an ethereal weightless to the figures. In the present work, a sense of weightlessness is manifest in the figure rising out of the flowers, her feet apparently holding none of her weight and that sense is heightened by the drapery which appears delicate and wet while it billows beneath, giving effect of air gently moving as Psyche ascends.
Equally prominent in these nymphlike sculptural groups, is the use of elongated s-curves in the overall composition. For example, a marble group of two nereid figures by Caradossi came to sale in these rooms on 13 October 2021, lot 6 or Andreini’s Italian Primavera (Allegory of Spring) sold on 6 November 2014, Sotheby’s, New York, lot 29. The same s-curve is employed in the present marble. This reframing of the a classical motif with the use of sinuous line and emphasis to ornate floral details is indicative of the movement now broadly known as Art Nouveau which rejected imitative style for a rapturous ‘new.’
Vichi and his family further emboldened this new style when his grandfather’s gallery was placed in an Art Nouveau building on Via Borgo Ognissanti, a remarkable landmark of the relatively few buildings built in this style in contrast to the surrounding classical architecture.
Today Vichi’s works are known for animated figures that have a harmonious reciprocity and compositional interplay with the scenery elements. As subjects, the sculptor worked in traditional portraiture and funerary commissions in addition to works conceived for commercial or public display most frequently of Antique, Orientalist, or allegorical figures, like the present lot. Psyche, the mythological beauty who ascended to godhood in her pursuit of her beloved-the captivating embodiment of the soul- was one of the most celebrated decorative subject of the era. At this time, her likeness proliferated across various media, frequently shown with butterfly wings in any of the attitudes from her narrative.