This enchanting marble bust of a young boy with luxuriantly ringleted hair is simultaneously a neoclassical sculptor’s acknowledgment of classical canons but also an insight into the rapidly changing aesthetics of 19th century art. This newly discovered bust is an apparently unique abbreviation of the full-length marble group of the Ammostatore (or Grape Crusher) that Lorenzo Bartolini carved in 1818 for the French nobleman, Count James-Alexandre de Pourtales-Gorgier, and today in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
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With the full-length figure - and consequently the abbreviated bust presented here - Bartolini’s aesthetic and commercial genius can be seen at play; not only did he create a composition that was imbued with the sort of naturalism that mid 19th century bourgeois taste yearned for, but he also created a composition that paid homage to the Florentine renaissance masters such as Donatello and Verocchio.

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