Raffaello Monti studied sculpture with his father,
Gaetano Monti of Ravenna, at the
Imperial Academy. He made his debut early and
won a Gold Medal for his group entitled
Alexander Taming Bucephalus. He and other
young sculptors soon became identified as
belonging to the Scuola Lombarda, a group
associated with a reaction against the severity
of the neoclassicism that dominated Italian
sculpture in the first half of the 19th century.
After periods spent working successfully in
Vienna and once again in Milan, he made his
first visit to England in 1846, but returned to
Italy in 1847 to join the Popular Party and
became one of the chief officers of the National
Guard. After the disastrous failure of the
Risorgimento campaigns of 1848, he was forced
to flee from Italy to England where he
was to remain for the rest of his life .
His career in England was extremely successful
and prolific. The Great Exhibition of 1851
occurred only a few years after his arrival, and
his reputation was largely built on the
works he exhibited. His 'Eve After the Fall',
awarded a prize medal, was particularly
well received, but two other sculptures in the
exhibition, the 'Circassia Slave' and a
'Vestal Virgin' established features that were to
become his trade mark: the delicate
rendering in solid marble of figures swathed in
transparent veils. ' A Vestal Virgin',
commissioned in 1847 by the Duke of
Devonshire before the exhibition, and the
dramatic
'The Sleep of Sorrow and the Dream of joy', now
in the Victoria and Albert Museum, are
examples of such pieces, some of which became
popular through reproduction in Parian
ceramic.
The present bust, though one of a type, is
particularly finely composed and delicately
carved. Although she does not wear a wreath of
flowers, this young woman, with the
modest tilt of her head and the veil with its
elaborate lace border and scattered rose sprays
almost drawn onto the material, suggests a bride
rather than a Vestal Virgin.
- (FF.301)
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