Unknown (Italian, 19th century?)
Diane de Gabies (replica)
Bronze, size unknown
Purchased, 1881; de-accessioned and presented to Warrnambool, 1943
Warrnambool Art Gallery
NGV 1905 notes that this bronze was purchased at the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1881. As noted in the 1943 annual report of the NGV, the work was deleted from the Melbourne collection in that year, and presented to the Warrnambool Art Gallery, together with Lombardi (G.B.) First Whisper of Love {1884} Warrnambool [SC].
The bronze is a reduced-scale statuette based on the Louvre original, a marble statue 1.65 cm high, excavated in Rome in 1792, generally regarded as a Roman copy of a famous statue of Artemis made for the Athenian Acropolis by Praxiteles in the mid 4th century BC: see references below. It was widely admired and frequently copied, in various media, during the 19th 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.
Refs.
(not listed in NGV 1894); NGV 1905, II.64: as purchased from the 1881 International Exhibition in Melbourne for £30; AR 1943, p.38 (as presented to Warrnambool Art Gallery). Many thanks to Serena Wong, Curator Collections, Warrnambool, for confirming that this work is still held in the Warrnambool collection, and for providing the photo shown here (September 2026)
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])