Raffaello Romanelli Italian, 1856 - 1928

on a pedestal

Alfonso Panzetta, Nuovo Dizionario degli scultori Italiani dell'ottocento e del primo novecento, Borgaro, 2003, p. 782

Overall in good condition with visible surface dirt that can easily be cleaned. The circular white marble base of the sculpture has a visible repair showing hairline cracks and white overpaint. This repaired break is located to the left side of the base where the sitter's left foot rests. There is also a repair at the back of the wheat sheaf. The pedestal is in good condition and surmounted by a revolving circular platform with two bronze knobs. Chips are visible at the edge of revolving platform.
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Ruth was a popular subject among nineteenth-century sculptors active in Italy, notably Giovanni Battista Lombardi and the American Randolph Rogers, whose famous depiction of the gleaning heroine is in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. no. 99.7.1). Romanelli’s model precedes those by sculptors having been exhibited in Paris in 1851. It is Romanelli's Ruth who arguably best conveys the character’s piety and modesty, despite a somewhat revealing costume. With sheaves in both hands, Ruth is captured in the act of her work, exhibiting Romanelli’s attention to detail in the highly realistic carving of the wheat and the beautifully modelled hair and headdress.

Raffaello Romanelli came from a distinguished line of sculptors. His father was the Florentine sculptor Pasquale Romanelli, who achieved an international reputation for his finely carved mythological and biblical marble figures. Romanelli began his training at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence under Luigi Pampaloni but was soon taught by the foremost Tuscan neoclassical sculptor, Lorenzo Bartolini. Finding Bartolini’s favour, he went on to become his collaborator and, upon the master’s death in 1850, the successor of his studio. Romanelli’s mythological and allegorical compositions were highly prized by a cosmopolitan clientele, and he exhibited select models in Paris. One such work, La Delusa, which he presented in 1851, was acquired by the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. In addition to collectors’ marbles, Romanelli executed numerous important commissions for monuments, such as those to Vittorio Fossombroni in Arezzo, Masi in Pavia, and Demidoff in Florence. Romanelli’s final tribute to his master, Bartolini’s tomb monument, is housed in the Church of Santa Croce in Florence. After Romanelli’s death in 1887, his son Raffaello and grandson Romano continued his legacy which lives on to the present day; the Romanelli studio (now a private museum) remains one of the few working studios in Florence.

A similar composition was sold Sotheby's London, Property from the Carbisdale Castle collection, May 20, 2015, lot 9.