FLORENCE - A rare bust of a noblewoman by the nineteenth-century Tuscan sculptor Giacomo Giovanni Papini enters the Uffizi collection.
The work was purchased by the State for the museum and will enrich the collection of sculptures in the Gallery of Modern Art of Palazzo Pitti.
The work is signed and dated 'GG Papini 1875' and is one of the few known examples of the limited production of Papini, a notable figure of a very successful artist at the national and international level at his time, but unfortunately, following his death, he explains the museum, "not sufficiently valued by official historiography" while "testimony of the notable success and international recognition of his artistic production, is his presence at the Universal Exposition of Paris in 1878".
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in this context, her plaster statue of Cleopatra dressed as Venus or Isis is exhibited "who goes to meet Anthony, the Roman consul, in order to sculpt herself and fall in love with him, at the price of 27,000 lire, a very significant sum at the time, for the marble execution of the work ".
However, despite his notoriety and official recognition, after his death the figure of Papini was relegated to the margins of Italian artistic life.
The work is in excellent condition and reveals a valuable and meticulous execution in particular in the details of the dress.
Papini, also a note from the museum, "in this marble is also a keen observer of the true natural, with remarkable results, thanks to the influence of the research promoted in those years by the brilliant and unscrupulous Florentine artist Adriano Cecioni.
