Analysis of the Portrait of Gioacchino Rossini offers extraordinary opportunities for defining Bartolini’s style. The brave freedom he has taken in representing aesthetic defects (the double chin, the swollen eyes) contributes to creating an anti-heroic but highly significant image of Rossini.
The other aspect is that it is an original cast from the clay model, as can be seen from the barely- defined hair and the approximate rendering of the neck attachment, which is probably due to a breakage during mould release.
In the section of busts exhibited in the museum, other noteworthy homages should be mentioned, such as one to Napoleon Bonaparte (1810) to whom Bartolini was very attached; the portraits of “Napoleonids”, like the realistic Joachim Murat (c. 1813), Bonaparte’s brother-in-law and the king of Naples, and of the young Joseph Napoleon Bonaparte (1829), the son of Lucien Bonaparte. The collection also includes the splendid busts of Countess Teresa Giucciolo Gamba, the poet Lord Byron’s lover; of Princess Cassandra Luci Poniatowski (1822), Grand duke Leopold II of Lorraine (1844) who in 1839 had finally appointed Bartolini master of sculpture at the Fine Arts Academy of Florence, after his having been banned from the role for years because of his radical aesthetic and political positions. Other busts worthy of mention are those of the scientist Giorgio Gallesio, and, of the historical figures, that of Pope Pius IX (1847), one of the artist’s last works. Although now a feeble elderly man in his late sixties, Bartolini went personally to Rome to honour the prestigious commission.
On display on the third floor of Palazzo Pretorio are the plaster models of the great Prato sculptor’s masterpieces such as Faith in God and Mariana Guireva, and the marble statue of The Spinner.
