Odoardo Fantacchiotti

ODOARDO FANTACCHIOTTI (Rome, 1809-Florence, 1877).
"Musidora", 1862.
White Carrara marble.
Presents restoration on the fingers.
Signed on the side of the base "O. Fantacchiotti"
Measurements: 110 x 33 cm.
The model of this sculpture was presented at the 1862 London World's Fair.The title "Musidora" is inspired by the poem "Summer" by James Thomson, published in 1727, in which a young man inadvertently glimpses a young woman bathing naked: he is torn between his desire to contemplate her and the moral need to avert his gaze.
Odoardo Fantacchiotti (1809-1877) was an Italian sculptor. In 1820, he entered the Florence Academy, where he studied with Stefano Ricci and later with Aristodemo Costoli. In 1837, he made the bust of Penelope Bourbon by Petrella Tommasi (Cortona, S. Francesco), and in 1839, he exhibited "The Slaughter of the Innocents" at the Academy.
In 1840, Fantacchiotti was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, which earned him numerous public commissions: for the Uffizi Gallery, he created the statues of Boccaccio (1837-1843) and dell'Accorso (1846-1852); for the Galileo tribune, he sculpted the medallion of Francesco Redi (1840-1841) and the bust of Ferdinando II de' Medici (1842).
In 1858, Odoardo Fantacchiotti, developing his art towards a classicism that exalted beauty and grace, completed the three most important works of his career: "Eve tempted by the serpent", our "Musidora" and the funerary monument of Luisa Teresa Renard, wife of the painter William Blundel Spence (Fiesole). These works triumphed at the Italian Exhibition in Florence in 1861, and later at the Universal Exhibitions in London in 1862 and Paris in 1867. They earned him the Medal of Merit in 1861 and the Cross of Merit of the King of Portugal in 1867.