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Lot Essay
The present composition exhibits considerable skill in carving Romeo climbing a ladder to Juliet’s balcony and showing each figure balanced beautifully in the moment of embrace. It is interesting to note that Shakespeare makes no reference to a balcony, rather it was artistic depictions in the 19th century which firmly established the moment when Romeo ‘With love's light wings did I o'er-perch these walls’ as The Balcony Scene.
The prolific gallery run by Antonio Frilli produced a variety of commercial sculptures in marble, alabaster and bronze, reflecting the pinnacle of fashionable taste of his time. He is first recorded as an exhibitor at the Espozione Nazionale di Roma in 1883, and he further exhibited in Glasgow in 1888 and Paris in 1889. He was one of a circle of renowned Florentine sculptors that comprised Cesare Lapini, Guglielmo Pugi and Ferdinando Vichi who had a close relationship with the productive Barzanti Gallery, Florence.
From the second half of the 19th century the Florentine studios fed considerable demand for genre sculpture from Europe, Russia and the Americas. It is becoming of their practice that the present composition was also made by another sculptor: a nearly identical marble by Fausto Biggi sold Christie’s, New York, 16 April 2015, lot 48.
The prolific gallery run by Antonio Frilli produced a variety of commercial sculptures in marble, alabaster and bronze, reflecting the pinnacle of fashionable taste of his time. He is first recorded as an exhibitor at the Espozione Nazionale di Roma in 1883, and he further exhibited in Glasgow in 1888 and Paris in 1889. He was one of a circle of renowned Florentine sculptors that comprised Cesare Lapini, Guglielmo Pugi and Ferdinando Vichi who had a close relationship with the productive Barzanti Gallery, Florence.
From the second half of the 19th century the Florentine studios fed considerable demand for genre sculpture from Europe, Russia and the Americas. It is becoming of their practice that the present composition was also made by another sculptor: a nearly identical marble by Fausto Biggi sold Christie’s, New York, 16 April 2015, lot 48.