Model for Monument to Nicola Demidoff

Lorenzo Bartolini 1837

Audio description of the artwork

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The fine sculpture exhibited in this display case is the first marble scale model that Lorenzo Bartolini realised after many sketches for the great funerary monument to Nicolaij Demidoff, the noble Russian patron dead in 1828. His sons Paolo and Antaloij commissioned Bartolini the tomb in 1830, but the work had a very troubled story: it was a long and challenging enterprise for the sculptor, who died before its achievement.

Technical information

Author: Lorenzo Bartolini
Title: Model for Monument to Nicola Demidoff
Date: 1837
Material and technique: Alabaster, white and rosy marble
Size: 73,5x51x51 cm
Location: Palazzo Pretorio Museum
Third Floor

The marble and alabaster scale model shows the dedicatory inscription “NICOLAS DEMIDOFF / OFFERT PAR L’AUTEUR LE I JANVIER 1837” on its base, together with Demidoff’s emblem. On the top are Nicolaij Demodoff, sitting with his young son Anatolij, and the allegory of Gratitude – its preparatory plaster model is on display in this same room. Four allegoric figures stand at the corners of the base, namely Siberia, Mercy, Truth revealing itself to Art, and the Muse of pleasures.

The funerary monument was finished in 1871 by Lorenzo Bartolini’s pupil Pasquale Romanelli, and was placed in Florence’s city centre, Lungarno Serristori, Demidoff Square: initially the tomb had to be positioned in the suburbs, inside the park of the villa the Russian family owned in San Donnino in Polverosa.

Another version of this model exists in the Modern Art Gallery of Palazzo Pitti in Florence: dating 1840, it is slightly bigger and carved out of Carrara marble. The scale model here on display was a Demidoff property until 1933, when the Pucci family acquired it: a few years later the Municipality of Prato bought this sculpture to enrich the town’s art collection.