Vittorio Caradossi (1861-1918)

Vittorio Caradossi (1861-1918) Florence was an Italian sculptor. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, where he was a student of Augusto Rivalta, Vittorio Caradossi (1861-1918) one of the most important names in Italian academic sculpture in the second half of the 19th century. Working almost exclusively with marble, he executed several public monuments, most notably his renowned statue of the Florentine sculptor of the Renaissance Desiderio da Settignano, whose model was exhibited at the 1900 Universal Exhibition, in addition to the memorial to Giuseppe Dolfi, hero of the Risorgimento Tuscany, located in Borgo San Lorenzo. He also exhibited in the 1909 edition of the Paris Salon.

Notwithstanding the formal rigidity and sobriety of his public works, Caradossi specialized in the production of sculptural groups of a decorative character and, above all, feminine nudes, of symbolic nature or allegorical pretexts, marked by an ethereal and celestial characterization, being abundant their representations of Nymphs, mermaids and fairies.

The predominance of such themes in their production, high technical quality and exemplary of the Tuscan academic sculpture of the fin de siècle, is a reflection of the strong demand of the international bourgeoisie for compositions imbued with “tolerable eroticism” which dictated in large part the direction of the European art market in the second half of the nineteenth century. His work bears resemblances to the sensuality and voluptuousness expressed in the works of predecessors such as James Pradier and Auguste Clésinger, also known for portraying nymphs in an attitude of surrender or self-abandonment, but in contrast to these, Caradossi sought to instill in his sculptures a greater sense of humor, expressing also a more concrete assimilation of modernity.