Attributed to Pasquale Romanelli

The inspiration for this iconic model by Bartolini is reputed to have occurred as the sculptor’s model rested one day during a sitting. Bartolini was working on his La Ninfa Oceania when his young model fell to her knees in exhaustion, submissively looking up at the artist. From this ephemeral moment Bartolini captured a composition of intriguing suggestion. The sculptor’s soft interpretation of Neoclassicism gives the girl a natural, vulnerable sensuality, yet the innocent purity of the subject has allowed the theme to switch from a girl at the mercy of the artist to a girl, symbolic of the whole of mankind’s faith, humbly kneeling before God, completely free of any accoutrements, as if on the day of judgement.

The original life-size marble (91cm.) now in the Museo Poldi-Pezzoli, Milan, was carved for Bartolini’s close patron Contessa Rosa Trivulzio Poldi in 1834. As a widow the subject was personified as symbolic of the hope that remained after the loss of her husband. Despite its specific intention, La Fiducia in Dio quickly became widely admired as one of Bartolini’s seminal works, its origins in the intimacy of the sculptor’s studio veiled by its religious title. A reduced version (46cm.), considered to be autograph, is in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence. An unsigned version (46.5cm.) was exhibited by Anthony Roth in 1984. More specifically in relation to the present marble, there is a replica in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg thought to have been carved by Pasquale Romanelli in 1858. Romanelli was Bartolini’s main assistant and inherited his studio. It is quite possible that like the Hermitage example, the present replica could be attributed to Pasquale Romanelli.

RELATED LITERATURE

M. Tinti, Lorenzo Bartolini, Rome, 1936 pp. 58-60; Lorenzo Bartolini: Mostra della attività di tutela, exh. cat. Palazzo Pretorio, Prato, 1978, pp. 50-51