White marble sculpture, Child with a Vanitas, Italy, 19th century

Description

This white marble sculpture in the round depicts a child standing on a naturalistic rocky terrace. In an evocation of the Vanitas and memento mori, the young figure inclines his pensive gaze toward a human skull, which he holds in a fold of drapery with his left hand. His gentle face is framed by long, curly hair; he wears a short tunic with pleated edging, held by a scarf draped diagonally across the torso. At the reverse, a tree trunk forms a support. The Romantic sensibility of 19th-century Italian sculpture is expressed here in the contrast between the child’s youth and the evocation of mortality, as well as in the care devoted to the volumes and drapery.