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Bronze relief. Height 34 cm. Unsigned. - With bronze-coloured and greenish patina, partly blackish. - With support welded to the inside. Without base. With an expertise by Luciano Caramel, Paris, from 23 February 2005 Provenienz Private collection, Belgium (since the 1970s) Exhibition Winterthur/Duisburg 2003 (Kunstmuseum Winterthur/ Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum), Medardo Rosso, cat. no. 11 with colour illus. p. 83 (bronze version in the Civica Galleria d'Arte Moderne, Mailand, inv. 7540) Literature Marco Fagioli, Medardo Rosso. Catalogo delle sculture a cura di Marco Fagioli e Lucia Minunno, Florenz 1993, cf. no. 12.4, p. 60; Luciano Caramel, Medardo Rosso: Le origini della scultura moderna, exhib. cat. Rovereto/Turin 2004, Mailand 2004, cf. p. 104 with illus. (cf. also Mola/Fabio III.7c); Paola Mola/ Fabio Vittucci, Medardo Rosso, Catalogo ragionato della scultura, a cura di Paola Mola e Fabio Vittucci, Mailand 2009, cf. I.8a-I.8d, with illus.; cf. also III.7a-III.7c, p. 351, partly with illus.) The bronze cast of the Civica Galleria d'Arte Moderne in Milan was the first bronze version made from the original plaster model of Medardo Rosso's work known as "Sagrestano" or "Lo Scaccino", which is preserved in the Museo Rosso, Barzio (cf. Mola/Vittucci 1.8a and 1.8b). Compared to other motifs of the artist, there are scarcely any formal variations on the "Scaccino" and only a few casts seem to have become known. The present cast is distinguished not only by its painterly, matt patina, but also by its vivid three-dimensional relief, which reveals the roughness of the material and the modulation of light and shadow to great advantage. In the final years of the 19th and in the early 20th century the fame of the Italian sculptor Medardo Rosso was comparable to that of Auguste Rodin in France. The two artists, who were initially on thoroughly friendly terms, had created an entirely new set of aesthetic premises in opposition to classical, academic sculpture and its tradition - premises that would remain influential well into the 20th century. Having already exhibited at the Parisian Salon since 1885, Rosso moved from Milan to the French capital in 1889. There he met the influential journalist and writer Paul Alexis and, most importantly, Emile Zola and Edmond de Goncourt, with both of whom he was friends. The concept of a sculptural "Impressionism" - newly coined at that time - was applied not only to Rodin, but particularly to Rosso. "The era of the block which one can walk around is gone forever" wrote Rosso. "My block is to be viewed like a picture, from a specific point, at a certain optical distance, where it reassembles itself with the help of the viewer's retina. It takes on its value, its quality and its beauty only when your eye beholds it in its own light. Conceived to be lit in a particular way, it must be viewed from a correct optical distance. If one is too near or too distant from it, everything blurs and becomes indistinct" (cited in: Giovanni Lista, Die Ursprünge des 'italienischen Impressionismus' von Medardo Rosso, in: exh. cat. Winterthur/Duisburg, op. cit., p. 48). "At the time when Medardo Rosso decided to move to Paris in 1889, he had achieved complete clarity regarding his ideas. He wanted to demonstrate that he was the founder of 'Impressionist sculpture' or of a new art founded on the 'impression'. 'In the name of the impression ... the art of sculpture was' to be 'freed from its eternal conventions'. He was thus the first Italian artist who went to Paris not in order to learn something, but in order to help establish the triumph of a previously unknown expression of modern art from the new Italy, being its only representative of international standing" (Giovanni Lista, ibid., p. 48/49).