Lot 12: RAIMONDO TRENTANOVE (1792-1832)

PROPERTY FROM THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

GEORGE WASHINGTON

measurements
height: 33 in.

alternate measurements
(83.8 cm)

inscribed R. Trentanove. Fece. in Roma. 1824

white marble

Executed in 1824.

PROVENANCE

Commissioned by James Lenox in Rome, 1824

EXHIBITED

Stony Brook, New York, The Museums at Stony Brook, George Washington, American Symbol, February 1999-February 2000

LITERATURE

Gustavus A. Eisen, Portraits of Washington, vol. 3, New York, 1932, p. 852, 945 (illustration of Paris version)
Lenox Library, A Guide to the Paintings and Sculpture Exhibited to the Public, New York, 1877, p. 22
New York Public Library, Catalogue of Paintings in the Lenox Gallery, New York, 1897, no. 2
R.W. Hill and L. Stark, "Washingtoniana in the New York Public Library," Bulletin of the New York Public Library, February 1961, p. 77

NOTE

During his apprenticeship with Antonio Canova (1757-1822), Italy's premiere neoclassical sculptor, Raimondo Trentanove assisted Canova in the production of a life-size statue of George Washington commissioned for the North Carolina State Capitol. In 1824, Trentanove executed this sculpture based on Ceracchi for James Lenox in his Rome studio. According to The New York Public Library, Lenox was an avid collector of Washingtoniana: an English correspondent described him in 1856 as "a worshipper at the Shrine of Washington." Another version of this bust is in the collection of the Musée de la Légion d'honneur, Paris.