Benzoni, Giovanni Maria (1809-73; Italian)
Euterpe, the Muse of Lyric Poetry
Marble, size unknown
Presented by James Chapman, 1885; de-accessioned and presented to the City of Geelong West, 1941.
Unidentified; present location unknown
The 1894 and 1905 NGV catalogues both list this statue as a replica, but provide contradictory details. NGV 1894 indicates that the original was in the Vatican, but this seems to arise from confusion with an antique work, probably the basis for a plaster cast also in the pre-Felton collection: see now Casts – I.Statues etc. (I.49), with a reproduction of the statue in the Vatican’s Pio-Clementine Museum.
NGV 1905, probably more reliably, describes the present statue as a replica of Benzoni’s original statue in the Rome Opera House, possibly a Euterpe documented as made by Benzoni for Prince Alessandro Torlonia in 1836.
This sculpture was one of four donated to Melbourne in 1885 by Chapman, including * Gott Flora {1885} Loc? [SC], also formally de-accessioned with the present work and transferred to Geelong in October 1941.
Refs.
AR 1884. p.36 (as received March 1885); SB, p.67 (Statues), with note indicating donation to Geelong West, Oct.1941; NGV 1894, p.133 (VI.Rotunda, no.42); NGV 1905, p.155 (VI.Sculpture – Entrance Hall, no.8)
For Benzoni’s 1836 statue, see e.g. http://legacy.bibliotecamai.org/cataloghi_inventari/carteggi/carteggio_benzoni/sommario.html