* 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 , was purchased at the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1881. The 1943 annual report of the NGV appears to indicate that it was presented to the Warrnambool Art Gallery in that year.

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; AR 1943, p.38 (as presented to Warrnambool Art Gallery) 

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])