ANTONIO FRILLI – WOMAN LYING ON A HAMMOCK
We spend our free time browsing the web in search of unique stone projects. But that is a well-known fact. This time we were captivated by a photograph of the statue of Antonio Frilli: “Nudo reclino sull’amaca” 1).
The date of birth of the author of the statue is unknown. All that is known is that he died in 1902. Frilli was an Italian sculptor living in Florence, where he founded a unique studio in 1860, where he worked with several assistants in coloured alabaster and Carrara marbles. These were works carried out on special orders, usually as decorations for private villas and as cemetery monuments. These works can be found in famous cemeteries such as the Cimitero delle Porte Sante and the Cimitero degli Allori in Florence.
Frilli traveled extensively and his works were known in many European countries, the United States, and even Australia. He participated in several world exhibitions – for example, in 1876 in Philadelphia at the Centennial Exposition or in 1881 in the Italian pavilion in Melbourne, where he presented sculptures and garden furniture.
Thanks to his travels, Frilli’s works can be found in many places around the world: Montevideo, Mexico, Buenos Aires, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg, and even Ulan Bator.
The statue that caught our attention was created in 1890 and was made of Carrara marble. In 1904, two years after Frill’s death, his son Umberto attended the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Missouri, where the work was awarded by six gold medals and a Grand Prix. The statue was last unveiled at the International Panama-Pacific Exhibition in San Francisco in 1915. In 1999, the statue was put up for auction at the Sotherby Auction House, where it was valued at $800,000. The statue is currently in the collection of Lord Lloyd-Webber.
An interesting fact is that the work was also the subject of Gary Rinehart’s novel from 2013. In his book Nude Sleeping in a Hammock, Rinehart describes the fictional owners of the statue and their fate since 1892.
1) Translation: A naked girl falls asleep in a hammock – also known as “sweet dreams”.
Source: Kurier kamieniarski
Author: Kurier Kamieniarski | Published: 15.11.2017
