Grand Tour Alabaster Fragment of a Draped Female Figure, 19th Century Italian

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A weathered alabaster torso in the Grand Tour tradition, carved as a draped classical female figure with one arm raised … Read more A weathered alabaster torso in the Grand Tour tradition, carved as a draped classical female figure with one arm raised to gather the fabric of her chiton at the shoulder. The honey-and-cream veining characteristic of alabaster catches light through the folds, giving the drapery a soft, almost translucent quality where the stone is thinnest. The figure stands on a naturalistic circular base with a roughly tooled, rock-like surface, mounted to a associated round socle for display.

Losses to the head, both arms below the shoulder/forearm, and the right leg below the knee are consistent with the piece’s age and history — the kind of accumulated damage typical of 18th- and 19th-century garden and collection statuary that survived decades of handling, weather, or shipping. Rather than detracting, these losses read as part of the object’s history, in the spirit of the fragmentary antiquities and Grand Tour souvenirs that shaped European collecting taste from the 18th century onward. The remaining drapery carving is confident and fluid, with deeply undercut folds and a naturalistic sense of movement in the raised arm.

A striking architectural fragment — equally at home as a plinth-top sculpture, a bookshelf object, or styled among other classical fragments and busts. See less