Vincenzo Gemito Lot n° 45

Acquaiolo Bronze sculpture cm 54 - The sculpture depicts a naked Neapolitan street urchin standing on a fountain with a basin, in the act of selling the ferrous water of the mummare. Gemito, a famous Neapolitan sculptor, dedicated himself with intense realism to portraying models taken from the street. The work "the water carrier" of which this is an effective contemporary version of the sculptor as evidenced by the excellent quality of casting and chisel as well as by the punches impressed in the bronze, was presented for the first time in Paris in 1880 after a year of elaborate creation, commissioned by H.R.H. Francis II of Bourbon, former King of the Two Sicilies in exile in Paris, to whom the work is dedicated with an inscription on the back of the base. The adherence to Gemito's classic models is interesting: the reproduced tub is exactly an example discovered in Pompeii and kept in the Archaeological Museum of Naples. "The Water Carrier" was then presented for a second time in Antwerp at the Universal Exhibition of 1885, giving inspiration to the Belgian sculptor Alfons van Beuerden (1854 - 1938) to create his version proposed in 1890.