A GERMAN WHITE ALABASTER BUST OF GOETHE, after Christian Daniel Rauch, the author's head turned to the right, on turned alabaster socle, and with a black marble Doric columnar pedestal, with a square upper platform and foot, 19th Century

Christian Daniel Rauch (1777-1857) was one of the great masters of German sculpture during the 19th century. Inspired by the Neo-Classicism he would have witnessed during his years of study in Rome, Rauch created an imposing equivalent in Germany. He executed numerous monuments, but was also renowned for his marble portraits of German celebrities. One of these was his bust of the author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe of 1820. This was a very popular work, and several versions were produced in his own studio. The present is slightly modified in the truncation and is in alabaster, it is most probably a posthumous copy for the library of a connoisseur.