Cod: 288802

Author : Silvestro Barberini (Modena,1854-1916)

Period: Second half of the 19th century

Silvestro Barberini (Modena, 1854-1916) Pair of terracotta busts depicting "Spouses of the Tosi Bellucci Family" Provenance: Modena, Palazzo Tosi Bellucci 56 x 40 x 30 cm Thanks to Luca Silingardi for the study of the two works; we attach the sheet. Thank you for bringing to my attention this interesting Pair of terracotta busts (56 x 40 x 30 cm each), from the noble Palazzo Tosi Bellucci in via Canalino in Modena, where – according to family memoirs of the descendants – they were located from the moment of their creation, fixed with a pin to two suspended shelves in the atrium; therefore, most likely depicting two spouses of the substantial Tosi Bellucci family, which boasted numerous possessions in Vignola, although it has not been possible to identify them at the moment. Dating to around 1890 through a historical-chronological comparison based on costume data (the style of clothing, hairstyle, etc.), based on stylistic comparisons it is hypothesized that the author is Silvestro Barberini from Modena (1854-1916). In favor of this attribution is, in particular, the Bust of Enrico Stufler (patinated terracotta imitating bronze), a certain work by Barberini, as it is signed on the front of the base "Barberini", dating to around 1900 due to the age of the effigy (ophthalmologist and dialect poet for pleasure, born in 1863 and died in 1923), kept at a private individual in Modena, from which in 1970 the cast was taken with which it was possible to create the bronze bust, now on the tomb of the same character in the central avenue of the Modena cemetery of San Cataldo (repr. in Il cimitero di San Cataldo a Modena. Guida ai monumenti, Modena 2012, p. 84). The bust of Stufler, in fact, shows a modeling with touches left exposed similar to that of the two busts you own; a ductus that gave the surface of the work a particular rough effect, aligning itself with the current of innovative "verismo" to which the artist had already adhered in the statuary group Delirium tremens, an essay of the Poletti Pension sent from Florence in 1881 and presented first in Modena, where it had caused a stir due to the character of strong realism, then at the National Exhibition of Bologna in 1888 (repr. in G. Martinelli Braglia, Ottocento e Novecento a Modena nella Raccolta d'Arte della Provincia, Modena 1997, p. 20). Alongside the register of smooth classicist taste, with even neo-baroque references, which is evident above all in the marble works – the bust of Ofelia from the Art Collection of the Province of Modena (ivi, p. 71), the numerous funerary monuments at the cemetery of San Cataldo (see Il cimitero di San Cataldo…, cit., pp. 35-37, 43-44, 49-50, 73, 80), the Virtue and in the Beneficence of the Ceccarelli tomb in Sassuolo (repr. in L. Silingardi, “Il dolore confortato dalle memorie”: la scultura funeraria, in Il cimitero monumentale di San Prospero a Sassuolo, edited by V. Vandelli, Sassuolo 2008, p. 60) – Barberini also possesses a register of a more "worked" and involved modeling, with rough surfaces, perhaps derived from the greater executive freedom that terracotta, and therefore bronze casting, could offer him; a register and a more plastic doing, for example, that can be seen in the bust of the friend Gaetano Bellei depicted in the Portrait of Silvestro Barberini (Modena, Museo Civico d'Arte; repr. in Museo Civico d’Arte di Modena. Dipinti dell’Ottocento e del Novecento, edited by T. Fiorini, F. Piccinini, L. Rivi, Modena 2013, p. 129) who paints the same Bellei, where, on the easel, the sculpture that the artist was modeling with the stylus he still holds in his hand is clearly visible. On the other hand, it will be precisely from the "verismo" of Barberini, based on the "social" one of Vincenzo Vela (1820-1891), that the path of Giuseppe Graziosi (1879-1942), his best and most famous pupil, will begin.