odoardo tabacchi · (1831–1905)
La Mascherina
technical sheet
| ARTIST | Odoardo Tabacchi |
| DATE | 1872 |
| material | White Carrara marble |
| DIMENSIONS | 127 x 74 x 46 cm |
| Signature | ODOARDO TABACCHI TORINO 1872 |
| PROVENANCE | |
| CONSERVATION | Private Collection • Belgium |
about the work
The sculpture depicts a Venetian woman dressed in a typical period costume, holding a Venetian mask in her right hand. She sits elegantly upon a round table, over a cloth that falls to the floor. The naturalism of the gesture and the refinement of the costume lend the figure a presence at once lifelike and theatrical.
Dated 1872, this work is without doubt one of Tabacchi’s masterpieces. The “Mascherina” was later presented in 1884 in Turin at the Esposizione Italiana, where it met with great success.
An author of funerary monuments and gracefully realistic female figures, Tabacchi excelled at translating the suppleness of fabrics and the life of the flesh into marble. The subject of the mask, emblem of Venice and of the play of appearances, offered him an ideal pretext for such virtuosity.
the ARTIST
odoardo tabacchi
Valganna, 1831 — 1905, Milan
Trained at the Brera Academy in Milan, Tabacchi was a pupil of Abbondio Sangiorgio, Benedetto Cacciatori and Pietro Magni until 1851, when he won the triennial competition of the Roman scholarship and perfected his art under the celebrated Tenerani. In Florence he frequented the “Caffè Michelangelo”; in Naples he met Domenico Morelli.
Returning to Milan in 1860, he collaborated in Magni’s studio. Professor at the Academia Albertina in Turin from 1897, he executed numerous public monuments there. His works are preserved in the modern art galleries of Milan, Turin and Rome, as well as in Naples and Ascoli Piceno.
