Bust

A youthful head of classical inspiration, the hair opening into tousled locks, the face turned in a slight contrapposto. The marble is worked with point and rasp and polished only in the flesh — the hair is left matt, and it is that contrast which gives the surface life.

Pieces of this kind reached Brazil in the nineteenth century through merchants and through families returning from Europe, and stood in the vestibules and stairwells of great houses. They are the other side of this collection: the classical taste that lived, in the same room, alongside baroque religious sculpture.