Medardo Rosso

Luigia (Gina) Ravenna (a gift from the artist circa 1919)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Mino Borghi, Medardo Rosso, Milan, 1950, no. 32 & 33, illustration of another model no no.
Paola Mola & Fabio Vittucci, Medardo Rosso. Catalogo ragionato della scultura, Milan, 2009, no. III.17g, illustrated p. 356

Attractive golden wax patina over plaster. The plaster is structurally sound and hollow. Some minor blackened spots at the top of the head consistent with age and dust remnants. Some studio dirt and material sediments visible on the back of the head, consistent with the artist's methods and process, and age and handling. The inscription is clear. This work is in overall good original condition.
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Enfant juif is one of Rosso’s most powerful depictions of a young child. Conceived while the artist was working in Paris in the early 1890s, the sculpture brilliantly captures the character and expression of the young boy, conjuring a remarkable sense of pathos and melancholy. The identity of the sitter remains the subject of some speculation; Rosso first used the title Enfant juif in 1896 and as a result it has been suggested that the subject was a young Oscar Ruben Rothschild, but Rosso subsequently published a number of photographs bearing the more general title Impression d’enfant or Head of a Child and then in 1926 he included it in an exhibition of religious art under the title of his birth saint San Luigi.

This ambiguity regarding the title offers a parallel to the intangible materiality of the work itself. Rosso’s distinctive use of wax – which imbues his work with the fluidity and transience that led him to be described as an ‘Impressionist sculptor’ – emphasises the fleeting nature of the boy’s expression. This transformation of the three-dimensional object into something intangible and mutable was one of the artist’s greatest achievements, and one he used to great effect in his work on Enfant juif. As Sharon Hecker writes: ‘This destabilization of perception has none of the erotic charge one finds, for example, in the semi-effaced monotypes and pastels that Degas made in the same years. Instead one is faced with a gradual, quiet deprivation of a vision never fully captured in the first place’ (S. Hecker, in Medardo Rosso. Second Impressions (exhibition catalogue), Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 2003-04, p. 44).

Rosso’s use of wax was also integral to his deliberate emphasis on the act of casting as the creative moment; a wax model was commonly only a transitory stage in the process of casting a bronze, but for Rosso the wax casts were works of art in themselves. The present work – with its rich and lustrous patina – illustrates Rosso’s virtuosity in this medium, and the ephemeral nature of the material seems particularly suited to this subject. As Heckler goes on to explain: ‘This sculpture seems to have held singular importance for Rosso. He repeatedly gave copies of Bambino ebreo as gifts to collectors, friends, patrons, critics, and museum directors… In many senses, it was his signature piece’ (S. Hecker, ibid., p. 45). 

The present work was given to Gina Ravenna circa 1919. A great beauty of her time, she was married to Luigi Ravenna - who was a close friend of the celebrated Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio - and together they entertained artists and writers. This work is a testament to the creative impulse sweeping Italy after the war and the close proximity of artists and intellectuals at that time.