Pair of orientalist male busts. Flemish school, ca. 1870

Pair of orientalist male busts. Flemish school, ca. 1870
Black patinated bronze
Marble and gilded bronze bases.
Measurements: 30,5 cm and 29 cm high.

Pair of male busts in orientalist style, made in finely modeled bronze and patinated in black, mounted on elegant marble bases. The sculptures, belonging to the Flemish school of the second half of the 19th century, reflect the European taste for the exotic and the romantic fascination for the Orient, very present in the decorative arts of the period.

One of the busts shows a man with a lively expression: he smiles openly, showing his upper teeth, with narrowed eyes and short curly hair that adds dynamism to the whole. The other, with younger, softer features, has a serene countenance and a more restrained gaze, with narrow, dark, almond-shaped eyes that evoke coffee seeds.

Both figures represent the orientalist ideal of nineteenth-century historicism and eclecticism, in which European artists reinterpreted the features and attire of foreign cultures from a romantic and decorative point of view. In the Flemish context, these busts are part of a sculptural production of high technical quality, destined both for the ornamentation of bourgeois interiors and private collections, reflecting the refined taste of the time for works inspired by "exotic" and distant themes.