Attributed to Lorenzo Bartolini (1777-1850). Alabaster Vase
Italian, Early 19th Century
Attributed to Lorenzo Bartolini (1777-1850). Alabaster Vase. Italian, c. 1815.
Height 55" (1,40m).
Provenance :- Ripley Castle, Yorkshire, since 1817, almost certainly acquired in Italy by Sir William Amcotts Ingilby (1783-1854);(1) Sold from Ripley in 1995.(2)
A closely related alabaster vase by Bartolini in the Palazzo Pitti, has the same central scene, which is from the Story of Lucretia.(3) The episode portrayed shows Lucretia and her maids being visited whilst spinning at home, by her husband and his fellow officers, who had been disputing as to whose wife was most virtuous. Lucretia’s subsequent suicide, having been raped by one of the officers, a son of the king, is said to have precipitated the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the Roman Republic. The Rape of Lucretia has been a well-known and persistent theme in Western art, literature and music.(4)
Lorenzo Bartolini was born in Tuscany and studied in Florence and at the Officina Inghirami in Volterra, a workshop established in 1791 which produced alabaster sculpture and objects in the neoclassical style.(5) In 1797 he moved to Paris, where he became a close friend of Ingres and the favoured sculptor of Napoléon, who sent him to Carrara in 1807 to direct the Academy of Sculpture. Later he settled in Florence, where his Grand Tour patrons included Thomas Hope and the 6th Duke of Devonshire.
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Footnotes
1. Its arrival at Ripley was noted by the agent and estate manager, John Hewitt, in his notebook which is in the family archive at Ripley. On July 5th 1817, he records unpacking a case containing part of the alabaster vase, also noting the arrival of the marble Venus, Venere Italica, attributed to the Pisani brothers which is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Museum no. 95.201. See Katherine S. Howe, Rienzi, European Decorative Art and Paintings, 2008, no. 48, pp. 113-114).
2. Bonham’s London, European Works of Art & Sculpture, 4th April 1995, lot 75.
3. see Alvar González-Palacios, Il Tempio del Gusto, 1986, Vol. II, fig. 443, p. 228.
4. For example Titian’s Rape of Lucretia, 1488/90, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Shakespeare’s narrative poem, Rape of Lucrece, of 1594; Benjamin Britten’s opera, The Rape of Lucretia, first performed in 1946.
5. Mauro Cozzi, Alabastro, Volterra Dal Settecento All’Art Deco, Florence, 1986, p. 36. We are grateful to Nicholas Penny for this reference.
