* Unknown (Italian 19C?) Diane de Gabies {1881} Loc? [SC]

Unknown (Italian, 19^th century?)
Diane de Gabies (replica)
Bronze, size unknown
Purchased, 1881
Present location unknown

NGV 1905 notes that this bronze, presumably a reduced-scale statuette (or perhaps a head), was purchased at the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1881.

The Louvre original (1.65 cm high), excavated in Rome in 1792, is generally regarded as a Roman copy of a famous statue of Artemis made for the Athenian Acropolis by Praxiteles in the mid 4^th century BC: see comparative photo below. It was widely admired and frequently copied, in various media, during the 19^th century.

The pre-Felton Melbourne collection also included a large plaster cast based on the Paris statue, and a plaster “Mask” of Diana possibly based on the same figure.

[comparative photo at right: Louvre original]

Refs.

Not listed in NGV 1894; NGV 1905, II.64: as purchased from the 1881 International Exhibition in Melbourne for £30

For the Louvre statue, see Haskell & Penny Taste and the Antique (1981), cat.no.31, pp.198-99 (noting that cast retailers Brucciani supplied plaster casts in various sizes), and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_of_Gabii (both with reproductions)

For the plaster cast formerly in Melbourne, see NGV 1894, p.146 (VIII.Cast Gallery [Antique Room], no.36); and for the plaster “Mask” of Diana, see ibid., p. 148 [VIII.54])