Lot 86: Annibale Monti , Italian 1875-1941 a portrait of a man white marble, on bronze eagle base and composite column

signed: Le A. Monti sculpt white marble, on bronze eagle base and composite column

measurements note bust: 60.5cm., 23¾in. bronze eagle base and column: 141cm., 55½in.

Annibale Monti's career is an incredible story of artistic triumph over physical disability. After contracting Meningitis at only three years of age he was left a deaf-mute. He attended the Institute for deaf-mutes in Milan before going to the Accademia di Brera where he received his first sculpture training under Enrico Butti. Monti then moved to Piacenza to join the workshop of his sculptor-grandfather Antonio Monti, and his two uncles Alessandro and Silvio. Like his grandfather and uncles much of his sculpture was memorial, but his work was distinguished from the rest of the workshop by its dynamism and modernity.

Annibale was also well-known for his portrait busts. His marriage, in 1907, to the countess Irene Arcelli Fontana gave him an entrée into Emilian aristocracy and access to numerous subjects for portraiture. The present bust of a distinguished and handsome young officer belongs to the period following his marriage. The sculptor skilfully combines bronze and marble, lifting the imposing bust over a fluidly modelled bronze base composed of an eagle surmounting an open book.

Monti was also awarded a number of monumental commissions including his Giovanni Battista Scalabrini for Piacenza Cathedral and works for the Basilica of St John Lateran, Rome. The Ricci Oddi Gallery in Piacenza has a terracotta model of his monument to his daughter Elena, who died aged eighteen and his bust of Guiseppe Gerbaix is preserved in the Museo del Risorgimento, Piacenza.

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Panzetta, pp. 586-7