Lot 82: - Pio Fedi , Italian 1816 - 1892 Pia de'Tolomei e Nello della Pietra or il sospetto (the suspicion) white marble

signed: SCULPTOR. P. FEDI. ETOR. O. white marble

measurements note 68cm., 26¾in.

Sold in these rooms 21st March, 1988, lot 120

This delicate group has an intricate, patterned surface which recalls Pio Fedi's early training as a goldsmith and engraver. The subject is taken from a verse in Dante's Purgatorio mourning the fate of 'La Pia'. In 19υth century scholarship it was believed that 'La Pia' referred to a lady from the Sienese Tolomei family, who married Nello d'Ighiramo only to be put to death by him at the Castello della Pietra in 1295, on suspicion of infidelity. In the 19υth century version of the story Pia was innocent and wrongly killed by confinement in an area where the air of the marshes was fatal. The contemporary commentator Theodosia Trollope, reviewing Fedi's version of the subject, wrote of the 'ill-fated lady' and interpreted the sculptor's depiction as the moment when the husband is about to leave Pia to her fate, ignoring 'her timid words of inquiry.' The first version of the model dates to 1846 and Fedi went on to produce a life-size version for Grand Duke Leopold II. It was one of his most popular models and he produced a number of reductions, mostly for the English market who had a Pre-Raphaelite appreciation of the subject and its treatment. Another version is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The present version has a particularly finely worked surface and is in the rare, smaller size. Nicholas Penny has proposed that this particular version was one of the two marbles in Fedi's studio destined for Mr Overend and Mr. N. Clayton, noted by Mrs Trollope on a visit before 1861.

RELATED LITEARTURE
Trollope, pp. 210-211; Penny, vol. I, pp. 35-37