VINCENZO LIVI (FL. SECOND QUARTER 19TH CENTURY) | VENUS WITH THE APPLE

While the life of his son, Giuseppe (b. 1828), is well-documented, there appears to be little biographical information on the sculptor Vincenzo Livi. A member of a noble family from Carrara, Vincenzo is likely to have trained in Rome, where he would have encountered the model he copied in the present marble - Bertel Thorvaldsen's Venus with the Apple. It appears that Livi specialised in marble copies of works by famous neoclassical sculptors, sought after by a cosmopolitan clientele who ordered sculpture from Carrara. A version of Antonio Canova's Three Graces signed by Vincenzo Livi and dated 1840 is housed in the Capodimonte Museum, Naples. 

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M. de Micheli et al., Scultura a Carrara: Ottocento, 1993, p. 254