ROME.- An eminent ethnographic sculptor whose work reflects a strong interest in the East, for its culture, traditions and iconography, Pietro Calvi distinguished himself on the 19th century Italian art scene for personal research conducted with an extraordinary ability to representation of pathos, combined with superb knowledge of materials. The Milanese sculptor, in fact, was among the first to experience polymaterism in busts by combining bronze and marble.

The harmonious integration, adopted by Calvi, of the two matters evokes the work of the famous 19th-century French ethnographic sculptor, Charles Cordier, though, unlike the this artist, who was able to handle his subjects with scientific precision, the Milanese master chose a premise to dwell on the dramatic potential of his North African models, peculiarity of Otello’s bust, a subject many times replicated by Calvi, based on Ira Alridge’s (1805 – 67) expression, the first African actor who played in Europe the role of Moro, the great tragic hero of Shakespeare’s drama, a murderer of his wife, consumed by jealousy for his wife’s alleged infidelity.

Central to Calvi’s work is therefore the intensity of human emotion, without neglecting a timely description of hairstyles, jewelery, accessories worn by characters drawn from the Arab world, protagonists of his polymateric plastic that let him win sales success in Europe and America. This is the case, for example, of this pair of sheikhs’s busts, brilliant testimonies of an exoticism that was growing in the art of the second half of the 19th century, studied with great skill by Calvi in choosing the details that enhance the wealth of composition and formal construction.

Trained at the Accademia di Brera in Milan and raised in the workshop of Giovanni Seleroni, among the first to encourage him in his polymateric experiments, Calvi worked at the Duomo of Milan, where he carved the statue of Santa Valeria and took part in realization of decorative works for the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele. Among the Italian artists present at the international exhibitions of Milan in 1867 (No. 259), at the Paris Opera Festival in 1870 (No. 4318), at the Royal Academy in London in 1872 and at the Universal Exhibition of 1878 in Paris (No. 48 ), he is acquainted with a second version of the pair of sheikhs busts offered by Ottocento Art Gallery, works that recorded in 2007 by Christie’s a winning result of just under $ 100,000.