ATTRIBUTED TO CESARE LAPINI (ITALIAN, 1848-1893)

Compare similarly modelled subjects of Psyche and butterfly signed by Cesare Lapini sold Waddingtons, Toronto, 16 December 2017, lot 241 and Christie’s, New York, 21 April 2021, lot 75. Professeore Cesare Lapini was born in Florence in 1848 and exhibited in Rome in the 1880s and 1890s. He was celebrated as a sculptor of genre figures and groups and is admired for the grace of his compositions, particularly his daintily posed nymphs which are carved with great skill, frozen in motion as they step forward as if in flight with their arms held aloft, their ethereal and transitory quality symbolised by a butterfly.