Lot 432 Dα

This beautiful Neoclassical bust can be identified as Rachel, the favourite wife of Jacob and one of the mothers of Israel. The Bologna-born sculptor Democrito Gandolfi created another similar representation in 1846 for the Frankfurt textile entrepreneur and art collector Heinrich Mylius (1769 - 1854), whose residence, the Villa Vigoni, was located on Lake Como. As early as 1839, Gandolfi explored the theme in the large sculptural group Rahel and Jacob, which is now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. In this group he developed an image of Rachel that became binding for his later work.


The bust, à l'antique, shows Rachel turned slightly to the left, her gaze directed upwards, dressed in an elaborate turban tied at the head and chin. Generally associated with its most famous wearer, Pauline Borghese, this headdress came into fashion in Napoleon's era after 1803. In 1795 Johann Gottfried Schadow completed his group of the Prussian princesses, in which the later Queen Luise of Prussia wears a similar turban. For Luise, the headdress became a unique distinguishing feature, as numerous later portraits show her with the scarf under her chin. Democrito Gandolfi places this fashion in a new context. The repeated depiction of Rachel with exactly the same turban and elaborately braided topknot not only serves to characterise an elegantly dressed woman from the ancient past, but becomes an explicit marker of a figure from the Old Testament.

Democrito Gandolfi (1797 - 1874) ran a studio in Milan from 1836. He worked in the style of Bertel Thorvaldsen, creating busts and portraits, mainly as funerary sculptures.