Rosso Medardo, Bambino ebreo Lot n° 31

Dedicated to Anna Marazzani Pica and signed at the bottom front, Wax Sculpture, H. 22.7 Cm, Work accompanied by authentication on photograph by Prof. ssa Paola Miola dated May 30, 2017, Private Collection, Paris, Medardo Rosso. Sight Unseen and his Encounters with London, Editions Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London, 2017, pp. 58 - 59 - 103 (ill.), November 22, 2017 - February 10, 2018, Medardo Rosso. Sight Unseen and his Encounters with London, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London, Jewish Child is one of several child heads that Medardo Rosso made during, his stay in Paris. The portrait is attributed to a descendant of the von Rothschild family, little Oscar Ruben, who may have been three or four years old at the time and who would die by suicide at the age of twenty-one. Although in one of his letters Medardo mentions a commission for a portrait received precisely from the Rothschilds ,this is, however, not officially documented and therefore not given for certain. The fact that Medardo executed more castings of this subject than others of the Paris period can be read as a kind of his identification with the stereotype of the 'wandering Jew and his rootlessness somehow marginalizing,, We are at the end of the nineteenth century and sculpture still struggles to break out of the cage of figurative representation imposed by the Academies. In this period, however, authors such as Malliol , who reduces the details of the human body into geometric volumes, or Rodin who in order to give expressiveness to the human figure first models it and then bends it,breaks it , hurls it on the floor, traumatizes it,, The great revolution of the end of the century, however, is photography, which will imply a new way of looking at the world and making art. It is in this context that Medardo is placed , aligned with the vision of Impressionist painting and thus with the idea of a subjective perception of reality ,in which everything is constantly changing according to light, points of observation, emotions and feelings. Matter is not something static or unchanging : beneath its surface, atoms and molecules pulsate with pure energy . , And it is this combination of light and malleability of matter that allows it to bring to life and evoke moods , emotions or fleeting moments of great intensity and poetry. In modeling these small heads of children , or characters of humble origins, Medardo senses the melancholy side of them, proper to the human condition , which at times , in the brief glare of a ray of light reveals all its drama., , Michela Scotti