AN ITALIAN ALABASTER GROUP OF A YOUNG MOTHER AND INFANT ON A BENCH, ON PEDESTAL

The prolific gallery run by Antonio Frilli produced a variety of commercial sculptures in marble, alabaster and bronze, reflecting the pinnacle of fashionable taste of his time. He is first recorded as an exhibitor at the Espozione Nazionale di Roma in 1883, and he further exhibited in Glasgow in 1888 and Paris in 1889. He was one of a circle of renowned Florentine sculptors that comprised Cesare Lapini, Guglielmo Pugi and Ferdinando Vichi who had a close relationship with the productive Barzanti Gallery, Florence. His sculptures embody the principles of late 19th Century academic art, and as a highly technical sculptor his skill is abundantly evident in his tour de force, Nude Reclining in a Hammock (Sotheby's New York, 3 November 1999, lot 62). The present example depicting a laughing mother and child is characteristic of other Frilli sculptures of joyful children including La ninfa delle rose and Bimba che ride (1901) both in private collections (A. Panzetta, Dizionario degli scultori italiani dell'ottocento e del primo novecento, vol. II, 1984, p.88, fig.370 and 372).