Adèle d’Affry (1836-1879) Swiss, Signed "Marcello" Bronze Female Figure. Signed on base. Depicts a seated female nude with arms up flicking her hair back. 

Condition: Good. 

Size: 6 1/4 x 5 1/2 x 10 in. 

#3492 . 

Adelaide Nathalie Marie Hedwig Philippine d’Affry, also known as Adèle d’Affry and the Duchess of Castiglione Colonna, was born in Fribourg, Switzerland on July 6th, 1836. The d’Affrys were a military family, and her great-grandfather Count Louis-Auguste-Augustin d’Affry, the first Landammann of Switzerland, devoted himself to engraving and documenting scenes from military life. His son, Charles, served under Bonaparte, and made similar artistic renderings. Adelaide grew up between Freiburg and Givisiez during the summer months, and Nice or Italy during the winter. Between 1853 and 1854 she received drawing lessons from Auguste Joseph Dietrich and took modeling classes in the studio of the Swiss sculptor Heinrich Max Imhof in Rome. In 1856 she married Carlo Colonna, who was knighted and received the title of Duke of Castiglione-Altibrandi a month later. The marriage was very short as Carlo Colonna died suddenly of typhoid fever in Paris in December of that same year. To settle a dispute with the Colonna family over her husband’s estate the Duchess took refuge in the convent of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, Trinidad des-Monts. Her artistic vocation gradually awakened during her time there, and in the fall of 1857 she made her first bust, modeled on her late husband. In 1859 Adelaide went to Paris and rented an apartment from Léon Riesener and began to frequent the intellectual circles of the Second Empire. She spent most of her time in the salons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the shows held by the Comtesse de Circourt. Her first successful composition, La Belle Hélène (1860), came after studying animal drawing at the Natural History Museum under the direction of sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye. She took anatomy classes in the basement of the School of Medicine and met Eugène Delacroix, the leader of the French Romantic School, who encouraged her work. However, in 1861 her application to study at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts was rejected, and her short-lived collaboration with Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux left her melancholy after his early death. In 1863, determined to succeed as an artist, she chose to exhibit at the Paris Salon under the pseudonym “Marcello.” She contributed three busts that were met with high praise which gained the attention of the Empress Eugenie, who invited her to participate in one of the famous Tuileries Monday. Adelaide became a fixture at the court, publicly expressing her admiration for Napoleon III. Now going regularly by “Marcello,” she exhibited a marble bust titled The Gorgon in the 1865 Salon, and received the official order of a portrait of Eugenie, producing four different versions of her bust. She submitted these to the Paris Salon in 1866, but it was harshly criticized and rejected by the Commission, with some speculating that the real reason was that her secret identity had been revealed. She spent the next two years traveling with her mother throughout Europe to avoid scandal, making numerous busts and sculptures and absorbing new influences. At Cauterets, Spain she was caught in an insurrection and became friends with the painter Henri Regnault as well as making a bust for the revolutionary General Milans del Bosch. The next decade was spent in relative comfort, with pieces commissioned by the Uffizi and several heads of state, but from 1877 on she spent much of her time in Italy on doctor’s orders to help calm her hemoptysis. Realizing her fate, she bequeathed the bulk of her sculptures to the State of Fribourg, provided that a museum be dedicated to her work. She died of tuberculosis on July 14th, 1879, leaving her memoirs unfinished and a trailblazing legacy for future female artists.

Good.