Scipione Tadolini

Scipione Tadolini was born in Rome in 1822, the son of the sculptor Adamo Tadolini, who had inherited the Via del Babuino studio associated with Antonio Canova. He trained under his father in that studio, and a Christie's catalogue note additionally describes a classical academic formation at "the Accademia in Rome," though no source consulted names the specific institution, dates of study, or any degree earned.

He established his reputation while still in his twenties with Ninfa Pescatrice (Fisher Nymph), a sensuous marble nude that blended classical subject matter with a Romantic sensibility. Church and state commissions followed: portrait busts of the Cini family for Sant'Andrea della Valle in 1844 and 1846, a bust of Cardinal Giuseppe Alberghini for the Church of Il Gesu in 1847, a statue of Santa Lucia for Santa Lucia del Gonfalone, and a bust of King Vittorio Emanuele II, described as the first Roman portrait bust of the king made after the Risorgimento, for the Italian Senate. His international commissions include an equestrian monument of Simon Bolivar for Lima, Peru, and St Michael Overcoming Satan, commissioned by the Boston merchant Gardner Brewer between 1865 and 1869 and now held by Boston College. He also produced mythological and Orientalist marbles that circulated widely in multiple versions, including La schiava greca (The Greek Slave), Ceres and Bacchus, Figure of an Odalisque, and Eve, a version of which stands today in the Kibble Palace at the Glasgow Botanic Gardens.

He died in Rome. Most specialist sources, including the Web Gallery of Art, Glasgow City of Sculpture, MutualArt, and Wikimedia Commons, give the year as 1892, though Wikipedia and some secondary listings give 1893. No source consulted for this profile supplies an exact day or month for either his birth or his death. On his death his son Giulio Tadolini took over the family studio.

There is no catalogue raisonne, dedicated monograph, or body of named critical commentary readily available for Scipione Tadolini in the sources reviewed for this profile. What is documented consistently is institutional and market recognition rather than critical prose: his work sits in Rome's Museo Atelier Canova Tadolini, the Italian Senate, the Museo Nacional del Prado's collection database, Boston College, and the Kibble Palace in Glasgow, and biographical sources describe him as internationally known and the recipient of numerous medals and awards during his lifetime, without naming a specific honor. No outlet or named critic could be quoted verbatim on the basis of the sources consulted.

Tadolini's market is thin and unevenly documented compared with better tracked 19th century sculptors. The best documented high price is USD 302,500, paid at Sotheby's New York on 23 October 2008 for La schiava greca (The Greek Slave), a figure recorded in a later Christie's catalogue note as a comparable prior sale. Christie's London has also sold works such as Kneeling Odalisque, but the sources reviewed for this profile do not confirm a specific price or sale date for that lot. General auction aggregators reference additional realized prices for the roughly twenty or so lots that have come to market, but no source available here ties a higher, specific price to a named work, house, and date, so those figures are not treated as a confirmed record.

Because the Tadolini workshop, like many Roman marble studios of its era, produced multiple versions of its most popular compositions, works such as La schiava greca and its odalisque variants require careful comparison with documented, dated examples in public collections rather than reliance on stylistic similarity alone. No catalogue raisonne exists to anchor attribution, and the artist's own biographical record has real gaps: even his death year is reported inconsistently across otherwise reliable sources as 1892 or 1893, and no exact day or month has been located for either his birth or his death. Auction supply is modest and results are not fully aggregated in the sources available here, so collectors should treat any single price, including the USD 302,500 result cited above, as a data point rather than a settled market ceiling.