Adèle d'Affry
Adèle d'Affry Duchess of Castiglione-Altibrandi | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 6 July 1836 Fribourg |
| Died | 14 July 1879 (aged 43) Castellammare di Stabia |
| Nationality | Swiss |
| Known for | sculpture, painting |
| Spouse | Carlo Colonna Duke of Castiglione-Altibrandi |
Adèle d'Affry, Duchess of Castiglione Colonna, pseudonym Marcello (6 July 1836 Fribourg - 14 July 1879 Castellammare di Stabia) was a Swiss artist, and sculptor.
Life
Adelaide Nathalie Marie Hedwig Philippine d'Affry was born July 6, 1836 in Freiburg. She was the eldest daughter of Count Louis d'Affry (1810-1841) and Lucie Maillardoz (1816-1897), the daughter of Philippe Marquis of Maillardoz. The d'Affry's were a military family: Louis d'Affry (1743-1810), the great-grandfather of Adele, was the first Landammann of Switzerland. Count Louis-Auguste Augustin Affry, the great grandfather of Adele, devoted himself to engraving, and his son Charles, who served under the command of Bonaparte, documenting scenes from military life.
Adèle d'Affry had a younger sister, Cécile Marie Philippine Carolina (1839-1911). After their father died on June 26 1841, Adele and Cécile were raised by their mother. She grew up between Freiburg and Givisiez during the summer months, and Nice or Italy during the winter. Between 1853 and 1854, Adele received a classical education, including drawing lessons from Auguste Joseph Dietrich. It was during these years that she took modeling classes in the studio of Swiss sculptor Heinrich Max Imhof in Rome.
On April 5, 1856, Adèle d'Affry married Carlo Colonna (1825-1856) in Rome. A month later, he was knighted and received the title of Duke of Castiglione-Altibrandi. The marriage was short as Carlo Colonna died suddenly of typhoid fever in Paris on 18 December 1856.
Adèle Colonna was obliged to return to Rome in 1857, to settle disputes between her, and the Colonna family in the case of the estate. The Duchess took refuge in the convent of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart, Trinidad des-Monts. His artistic vocation gradually awakened at that time. She took lessons in the workshop of Imhof, visited many churches and admired the works of antiquity and Michelangeo. In the fall of 1857, she modeled the bust of her late husband. This first sculpture was quickly followed by a self-portrait.
In 1859, d'Affry went to Paris and rented an apartment from Léon Riesener (1808-1878), a cousin of Eugene Delacroix, at No. 1 rue Bayard. Pierre Andrieu (1821-1892), the familiar Riesener and Delacroix assistant, helped to decorate in fresco the dining room and workshop. The Duchess began to frequent the brilliant society of the Second Empire. She chaperoned her sister Cécile until her marriage, on 29 October, to Baron Moritz von Ottenfels-Gschwind (1820-1907), an Austrian diplomat. The rank of Adele led to frequent legitimists salons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and taste to prefer the show held by the Comtesse de Circourt. The beautiful Duchess built lasting friendships, including with Adolphe Thiers, and Auguste Joseph Alphonse Gratry.
d'Affry worked on her first successful composition, La Belle Hélène (1860). She studied animal drawing at the Natural History Museum under the direction of sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye, and modeled from nature. Auguste Clésinger monitored her progress. From December, she took anatomy classes from Professor Sappey in the basement of the School of Medicine. On September 6 1860, during a dinner at the Barbier, Adele met Eugène Delacroix.
In 1861, her application to study at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts was rejected. Back in Rome, d'Affry admired the Villa Medici group of Ugolino and his children, which works Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, then a boarder places. The friendship between the two artists only ceased with the death of the sculptor.
In 1863, d'Affry chose, after much hesitation, to exhibit at the Paris Salon under the pseudonym "Marcello". She had three busts: Bianca Cappello, the Portrait of Count G. N ... [icolaÿ] and the portrait of the Duchess of San C ... [Esario], a work in wax. The success met by her Bianca gained the attention of the Empress Eugenie, who invited her to participate in one of the famous Tuileries Monday. d'Affry was then invited to the court, alongside Napoleon III, whom she greatly admired.
During the month of February 1864, Marcello received Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux in Givisiez, and rejected the marriage proposal presented by Ms. Carpeaux for his son. Marcello exhibited the Gorgon, a marble bust in the 1865 Salon; she received the official order of a portrait of the Empress Eugenie, intended to decorate the throne room of the city hall of Paris. Marcello produced four different versions of this bust.
During the months of June and July, 1866, Marcello left for London and monitored the reception of her bronze bust of The Gorgon, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy. Her admiration for the queen Marie Antoinette, she shared with the Empress Eugenie, has led her to achieve the busts of Marie Antoinette at Versailles and Marie Antoinette at the Temple. She presented to the Salon in Paris in May until November 1866, a bust of the Empress, which was harshly criticized and rejected by the Commission of fine arts of the city of Paris. She feared having fallen out of favor with Eugenie. This case, despite its successful outcome - the prefect Haussmann made the decision to accept the bust.
Marcello presented eight of her works, including Hecate, the Emperor Napoleon III command to the gardens of Compiègne, at the Universal Exhibition of 1867, in the section of the Papal States. Then, accompanied by her mother, she traveled during the months of May and June 1867 across Austria, Germany and Hungary. In Budapest, the two women attending the coronation of Empress Elisabeth. On her return to Paris, Marcello makes a small marble bust of her.
Between March and August 1868, the Duchess traveled in the north of Italy and stopped in Rome. In cure at Cauterets, in the Pyrenees, she crossed the border and traveled to Spain, where she was caught in an insurrection. Despite the dangers of this situation, she remained to Madrid where she worked with her friends, the painters Henri Regnault and Georges Clairin. She met the revolutionary General Milans del Bosch, and she modeled his bust. Letters of recommendation from Prosper Mérimée, opened the doors for her of the Prado Museum. She admired, among others, the works of Diego Velasquez.
From Freiburg, where she lived since January 1876, Marcello began a new journey in Italy: Florence, Orvieto, Rome, Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, Padua, Venice, Verona, Milan. The director of the Uffizi Gallery commissioned his portrait. Her bust of Baroness of Keffenbrinck, presented at the Salon of that year earned her a mere honorable mention. In 1877, exhausted by her cough and joint pain, Adele spent December in Italy, on the advice of her doctors.
In 1878, Marcello moved constantly between Naples, Switzerland and Paris, in search of a climate that would calm her hemoptysis. On January 2, a second version of her will listed the sculptures she bequeathed to the State of Fribourg, provided that a museum be dedicated to his work. Based in Castellammare di Stabia in 1879, Marcello put her papers in order, working on writing her memoirs, left unfinished. She died of tuberculosis on 14 July 1879.[1]
Works
- Femme transtévérine, 1874 musée d'Orsay
- La Marquise de Talenay, 1875, musée d'Orsay
- Gorgone, 1865, Fribourg, musée d'art et d'histoire
References
- ^ Tatiana Silvestri, « Biographie » dans Mina 2014, p. 115-119.
Sources
- Odette d'Alcantara, Marcello : Adèle d'Affry, duchesse Castiglione-Colonna, 1836–1879, sa vie, son œuvre, sa pensée et ses amis, Genève, Éditions générales, 1961
- Henriette Bessis, Marcello sculpteur, Fribourg, Musée d'art et d'histoire de Fribourg, 1980
- Ghislain de Diesbach, La double vie de la duchesse Colonna, Pregny-Genève, Editions de Penthes, coll. « Suisses dans le monde », 2015 (1re éd. 1988 (dans la collection « Terres des femmes » de la Librairie académique Perrin à Paris))
- Caterina Y. Pierre, « Genius has no sex » : The sculpture of Marcello (1836-1879), Pregny-Genève et Gollion, éditions de Penthes et Infoclio, 2010
- Gianna A. Mina (dir.), Marcello, Adèle d'Affry (1836-1879), duchesse de Castiglione Colonna (catalogue d'exposition (Fribourg, MAHF, 7 novembre 2014 – 22 février 2015 ; Ligornetto, Museo Vela, 26 avril – 30 août 2015 ; Musées nationaux du Palais de Compiègne, 16 octobre 2015 – 1er février 2016 ; Pregny-Genève, Musée des Suisses dans le monde, février – juin 2016)), Milan, édition 5 Continents, 2014
- Mélanie Kaeser et Michel Viegnes (éd), Adèle d'Affry "Marcello" Écrits de fiction : nouvelles, théâtre, récits, Fribourg, Presses Littéraires de Fribourg, 2014
- Simone de Reyff (dir.) et Fabien Python (dir.), Les Cahiers d'Adèle, Société d'histoire du canton de Fribourg, coll. « Archives de la Société d'histoire du canton de Fribourg / nouvelle série » (no 17), 2014
External links
