Little girl playing five stones

The girl here represented is Ivana Consani, the sculptor’s beloved niece often portrayed. The concentration of the face draws the attention on the exorbitantly long and expressive hands such as to recall the peculiar shape defined as “the Etruscan hand” evident in small bronzes where the hands of the figures, often dancers, appear disjointed and extraordinarily thin, in a form and in a gesture that enchanted D.H. Lawrence during his journey in Etruria of which he wrote in his “Etruscan Places”, published in London in 1932. The little girl sits on an adorned base, shaped like a capital decorated with acanthus leaves. It probably is the sculpture to which Andreotti refers to in the letter to Ojetti of April 29, 1919: an art piece to be placed on the fireplace “on a one-meter base, not more”.

Floor:
Room: Mature Works
Year: 1919
Author: Libero Andreotti