14. Democrito Gandolf Bologna 1797 – Bologna 1874

RACHEL marble, h. 55 cm

his elegant and delicate female bust can be identified as Rachel and attributed to the Bolognese sculptor Democrito Gandolfi, thanks to a comparison with a similar work, signed and dated 1846, made for the collector Enrico Mylius (1769-1854) and still inT his residence on Lake Como, Villa Vigoni at Loveno di Menaggio1. In the Old Testament story, Jacob fell in love with Rachel, the daughter of Laban, and promised Laban that he would serve him for seven years for the right to marry her. However, Jacob was tricked into marrying Leah, Rachel’s older sister; the young man was then forced to work for another seven years for his father-in-law before he could finally marry his beloved as well. Our Rachel turns slightly to the left, gazing raptly towards the sky; her head is enveloped in an unusual turban that passes tightly under her chin and falls from the left side of her face. Te end of the turban wraps around her very smooth bare neck like a thickly pleated scarf edged with scalloped lace, masterfully reflecting the shifting light. Another virtuoso detail is the hair gathered at the nape into a coiled plait. Te third son of the Bolognese painter and engraver Mauro (1764-1834), and grandson of the famous painter Gaetano (1734-1803), Democrito Gandolfi grew up with his mother Caterina Delpino since his parents had a difficult relationship2. He received his early training at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, where he is documented between 1808 and 18163. In 1816, with the assistance of a maternal uncle and against the wishes of his father, Democrito

1 Te sculpture is illustrated in Antonio Musiari, “Al mondo non è sol Roma e Canova”. Linguaggi e ricezione dell’opera di Pompeo Marchesi fra monumenti privati e committenza religioso, in Pompeo Marchesi. Ricerche sulla personalità e sull’opera, Gavirate (Varese) 2003, pp. 17-204, on p. 64. 2 On Democrito Gandolfi see the section dedicated to him in the entry on Gandolf, Mauro, by Donatella Biagi Maino, in Dizionario Biografco degli Italiani, 52 (1999), pp. 172-175, on pp. 174-175. See also the biographical entry in Alfonso Panzetta, Nuovo dizionario degli scultori italiani dell’Ottocento e del primo Novecento. Da ad Arturo Martini, 2 vols, Borgaro (TO) 2003, I, p. 425. For new documen- tary materials and a new attribution, see Marika Grigis, Sarah Malenza and Marianna Vassena, Democrito Gandolf autore del ritratto scultoreo del conte Leonino Secco Suardo, in “Bergomun”, 103, 2008, pp. 169-188. 3 Michelangelo L. Giumanini, Tra disegno e scienza. Gli studenti dell’Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna (1803- 1876), San Giorgio di Piano (BO) 2002, p. 167.

86 87 Democrito Gandolfi, Meeting of Jacob and Rachel, Wien, Kunsthistorisches Museum

88 Democrito Gandolfi, Rachel, Loveno di Menaggio (Lake Como), Villa Vigoni

travelled to to take up an apprenticeship at the workshop of Antonio Canova (1757- 1822). After moving to in 1822, the young Bolognese sculptor continued his studies at the Accademia di Brera, where he studied under Camillo Pacetti (1785-1826) and Pompeo Marchesi (1783-1858). His first important commission came in 1824: the sculptural decora- tions for the church of San Michele in the Vantiniano cemetery in Brescia. His work in Brescia, which took several years, included the St Michael Archangel (1826-27) to be placed above the main altar of the church, thirteen herms of saints in white-painted terracotta for the drum of the dome, alongside two monumental Lions (1831) and two female Mourners (1833) whose location was only decided on many years later4. In Milan we find Gandolfi active at an important city worksite, that of Porta Orientale (later Porta Venezia), reconstructed to a project by Rodolfo Vantini between 1827-28. In 1834, Gandolfi executed two of the monumental sculptures adorning it: Vulcan and Ceres5.

4 On this commission see: Valerio Terraroli, Il Vantiniano. La scultura monumentale a Brescia tra Ottocento e Novecento, Brescia 1990, pp. 33-37 and Bernardo Falconi, La stagione neoclassica e romantica, Dai modelli canoviani al cantiere del Vantiniano alla scultura di gusto “troubador”, in Valerio Terraroli, ed., Scultura in Lom- bardia. Arti plastiche a Brescia e nel bresciano dal XV al XX secolo, Milan 2010, pp. 215-259, on pp. 222-226. 5 “Biblioteca italiana, o sia giornale di letteratura, scienza ed arti”, tomo LXXIV, anno decimo nono, Aprile, Maggio, Giugno 1834, p. 449, note 1.

89 90 Te growing success of Democrito Gandofi can be measured by the status of his clients, who included the Bergamasque count Leonino Secco Suardo (1798-1878), whose portrait the sculptor executed in 1837-386 and, above all, the aforementioned merchant and banker Enrico Mylius, at the forefront of cultural life in Milan, who commissioned large numbers of sculp- tures and adored Bertel Torvaldsen (1770-1840). Before the head of Rachel mentioned above, Gandolfi had made Te Mother of Moses Abandoning her Son to the Waters of the Nile (1845)7 for Mylius. It is still in Villa Vigoni today and, as we know from a letter of 1852, belonged to a select group of sculptures on religious subjects: “La casa fu interamente decorata in varie epoche di oggetti d’Arte, particolarmente di scultura – Oltre il Nazareno del Cav. Marchesi, vi è un gruppo rap.te la Madre di Mosè depositando alle acque il bambino del Gandolfi Bolognese, una Ruth di Imoff Svizzero, poi in un altro luogo una Eva del Cav. Baruzzi, ed un Davide cantando i Salmi di Manfredini, tutte queste opere sono grandi al vero”8. Whilst the two monumental Lions for the Vantiniano cemetery were modelled on those created by Canova for the tomb of Clement XIII, the work of our sculptor is more reminiscent of the severe and solemn style of Pompeo Marchesi than of the absolute purity of Canovian Neoclassicism. In Gandolfi’s works we begin to see Romantic touches, apparent both in the depiction of subjects extraneous to the classical world and the formal rendering, more attentive to detail. In this sense, Gandolfi’s masterpiece is the group with the Beggar Woman in which a defenceless mother, exhausted and humiliated by poverty, is shown seated, her face completely covered by a veil, one child in her lap and another two at her feet9. Te increasing interest in historical subjects also led to a production, in both painting and sculpture, of works on Biblical subjects; these include not only narrative scenes but also isolated figures, sometimes captured in the intimacy of contemplation, like the naked kneeling Tamar (1820) by Pompeo Marchesi (Milan, Civica Galleria d’Arte Moderna). In keeping with this trend, in 1839 in Vienna, to which he had moved two years earlier, Democrito Gandolfi sculpted a marble group depicting the Meeting of Jacob and Rachel (Wien, Kunsthistorisches Museum). Te sculptor used this work as the prototype for his isolated bust of Rachel, thus creating an idealized image in which the turban worn by the figure becomes the protagonist and, so to speak, the attribute of Rachel, identifying her as a character from the Old Testament. Tis type of headgear, consisting of a band wrapped around the head like a ribbon and passing tightly under the chin, is worn, for example, by the aforementioned Tamar by Mar- chesi, and even earlier by Rachel’s companion in the canvas by Andrea Appiani (1754-1817)

6 Grigis, Malenza e Vassena, art. cit., pp. 169-188. 7 On this work see entry no. 30 by Tomas Besing in Rosanna Pavoni, ed., “… rispettabilissimo Goethe… caro Hayez… adorato Torvaldsen…”. Gusto e cultura europea nelle raccolte d’arte di Enrico Mylius, Venice 1999, p. 132. 8 Letter of 19 December 1852, addressed by Giovanni Servi to Bernhard von Lindenau, published in Pavoni, op. cit., Doc. 51, pp. 196-197, on p. 196. 9 Te work, signed but not dated, was purchased in 1880 by the Musée de Picardie at Amiens, where it is still held today.

91 , Ruth, Bologna, Civiche Collezioni d’Arte

depicting the Meeting of Jacob and Rachel (1805 c.), in the church of San Martino at Alzano Maggiore (). But it is above all in some Biblical figures painted by Francesco Hayez (1791-1882), that this headgear becomes a distinctive feature; consider for example one of the girls in Lot with his Daughters (1833) in a private collection, or Bathsheba at her Bath (1834) also in a private collection. However, it is in the pensive and sensual figure of Ruth (1853, Bologna, Civiche Collezioni d’Arte) that Hayez, the most sublime master of the Romantic period in Mi- lan, seems to have taken our Rachel as his model; as in the sculpture, the turban wraps around the figure’s neck following Gandolfi’s invention, though in reverse. When he visited the exhibi- tion at the Accademia di Brera in 1846, Hayez certainly saw Democrito Gandolfi’s Rachel; it was on display there and was already owned by Enrico Mylius.

ANDREA BACCHI

92 93