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Alessandro Lazzerini
A Pair of Large Carrara Marble Figural Groups Of Children on Swings
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A Pair of Large Carrara Marble Figural Groups Of Children on Swings, By Alessandro Lazzerini (Italian, 1869-1942), On Green Scagliola Pedestals.The...
Dimensions
Height: 218 cm (86 in)Width: 70 cm (28 in)
Depth: 50 cm (20 in)
Weight: 140 kg
PrintDescription
A Pair of Large Carrara Marble Figural Groups Of Children on Swings, By Alessandro Lazzerini (Italian, 1869-1942), On Green Scagliola Pedestals.
The first group depicts ‘Two Children on a Swing’ (‘Coppia di bimbi sull’altalena’), modelled with a boy and a girl seated on a swing tied to a branch of an ivy-clad tree trunk. Its pair, depicts ‘Two Children Falling from a Swing’ (‘Coppia di bimbi che cadono dall’altalena’), with the swing held by one rope with the boy falling to the ground and the girl holding him.
Signed ‘Alessandro Lazzerini’.
Italy, Circa 1900.
A masterclass in technical virtuosity, these exquisitely sculped groups show children, a boy and a girl, playing on swings before and after, a fall. The delightful compositions of innocence and mischief are modelled with lifelike realism and pose. It is difficult to comprehend the skill of the sculptor in balancing the figures which appear suspended in mid-air, supported only by the swing ropes, all carved in marble. The charming and sentimental subjects are part of the romantic school of Italian verismo, which favoured subjects from everyday life over mythical depictions. Held in a private collection since they last appeared on the market in 1990, they are an important rediscovery and documented in Alfonso Panzetta’s seminal dictionary of Italian sculpture, which illustrates them both.
The present examples illustrated in the Dictionary of Italian Sculptors by Alfonso Panzetta published in 1994.
Date
Circa 1900
Origin
Italy
Medium
Carrara Marble
Signature
Signed ‘Alessandro Lazzerini’
Specifications:
‘Two Children on a Swing’
Height : 100 cm | 39 inches
Width : 60 cm | 24 inches
Depth : 48 cm | 19 inches
Weight : 140 kg | 308 lbs
‘Two Children Falling from a Swing’
Height : 97 cm | 38 inches
Width : 70 cm | 28 inches
Depth : 50 cm | 20 inches
Weight : 140 kg | 308 lbs
Pedestals:
Height : 118 cm | 46 inches
Diameter : 50 cm | 20 inches
Alessandro Lazzerini (1869-1942)
Alessandro Lazzerini was born in Carrara and studied at the Carrara Academy. He was a pupil of Ferdinando Pelliccia (1808-1892). He was part of the Lazzerini family of sculptors that ran a marble workshop in Carrara over multiple generations dating back to 1640 and was related to Pietro Lazzerini (1842-1918), who exhibited in Florence, Milan and Berlin, and his brother Giuseppe Lazzerini (1831-1895) who exhibited at the International Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures, Dublin, in 1865.
Alessandro specialised in genre, and allegorical subjects, and won medals at both the 1889 and 1900 Expositions Universelles. He exhibited a group titled ‘La Force’ at the Paris Salon of 1910 (No. 335). Of his monuments, the one to Pergolesi in Jesi and the Monument to Petrarch in Arezzo are his most celebrated. Alessandro’s numerous monuments, statues and decorative oeuvre stand as fine examples of the late 19th century Italian skill and eclecticism.
Bibliography:
J. Mackay, The Dictionary of Sculptors in Bronze, Woodbridge, 1992, p, 226.
A. Panzetta, Dizionario Degli Scultori Italiani, Vol. I, Torino, 1994, p. 164.
L. Passeggia, ‘The Marble Trade: The Lazzarini Workshop and the Arts, Crafts and Entrepreneurs of Carrara in the Early Nineteenth Century’, in C. Sicca & A. Yarrington (eds.), The Lustrous Trade Material Culture and The History of Sculpture in England and Italy, c. 1700- c. 1860, Leicester, 2000, 156-173.
Christie’s London, 1990.
Private Collection, Japan.
A. Panzetta, Dizionario Degli Scultori Italiani, Vol. I, Torino, 1994, ill. 465, p. 108 & ill. 466. p. 109.
