Movement, Style, School or Type of Art:
Sculpture
Date and Place of Birth:
July 6, 1836, Fribourg, Switzerland
Life:
"Marcello' (a masculine, professional pseudonym) was a talented draftswoman, sculptor and painter who had picked, by accident of gender and date of birth, a harsh environment in which to be taken seriously as an artist. She showed such early promise in art that her parents, of Swiss nobility, allowed her to study sculpture in both Switzerland and Rome. It was in the latter that she married Don Carlo Colonna, Duke of Castiglione-Altibranti - and subsequently ended her artistic pursuits.
The Duke, however, proved extraordinarily short-lived, and the Duchess soon returned to both Rome and sculpting. For the rest of Marcello's life, she divided her time between Paris - where her studio became a popular social outlet - and Italy, where she traveled widely and continued to study. Though we know Marcello best for her bronze sculpture Pythia, which graces the Opera Garnier in Paris, she produced many other, highly collectible works during her brief 20-year career.
Important Works:
- The Beautiful Helen (bronze), 1862
- Bianca Capello (marble bust), 1863
- Pythia (bronze), 1870
- Portrait of Carpeaux (plaster bust), 1875
- Phoebe ("Portrait of Mélanie de Portalès") (marble bust), 1875
Date and Place of Death:
July 14, 1879, Castellamare (near Naples), Italy
A Quote From Marcello:
- "It is bizarre, energetic, and not at all systematic, so I am going to have everyone against me who follows the regiment, which is a lot of people in France." - Marcello in a letter to her friend, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, on the subject of her Pythia.
Go to Artist Profiles: Names beginning with "M" or Artist Profiles: Main Index