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This free-standing, white marble bust shows the head, shoulders, and upper chest of a young boy. In this photograph, the sculpture is angled to our right. The boy has full cheeks, a slightly upturned nose, and short, wavy hair. He stares straight ahead, his faint eyebrows slighty lifted. His loose garment drapes from his right shoulder, on our left, down and across his chest to just below his left shoulder.
National Gallery of Art · Sculpture
A Little Boy
Desiderio da Settignano
- Date
- 1455/1460
- Medium
- marble
- Dimensions
- overall: 26.3 x 24.7 x 15 cm (10 3/8 x 9 3/4 x 5 7/8 in.)
- Classification
- Sculpture · Bust
- Accession number
- 1937.1.113
- Credit line
- Andrew W. Mellon Collection
- Time span
- 1401 to 1500
- Department
- CSD
Subjects and terms
- Florentine
- Anonymous
- European Sculpture 1300-1800
- Renaissance
- boy
- portrait
Provenance
Purchased 1846 in Italy by Eugène Piot [1812-1890], Paris; sold 26 April 1864 to Paul van Cuyck, Paris.[1] Louis-Charles Timbal [1821-1880], Paris; sold 1872 with his collection to Gustave Dreyfus [1837-1914], Paris;[2] his estate; purchased 1930 with the entire Dreyfus collection by (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[3] purchased 15 December 1936 by The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh;[4] gift 1937 to NGA. [1] According to the Duveen Brothers invoice, see note 4. [2] According to information kindly proved by Marie-Amélie Carlier, Timbal asked to retain possession of the bust until his death, even though it had technically been sold to Dreyfus with the rest of the collection in 1872. Dreyfus had a copy of the bust until Timbal died in 1880. See Ms. Carlier's e-mail of 12 October 2007 to Nicholas Penny in NGA curatorial files. [3] Provenance prior to Mellon Trust is according to David Finley's notebook donated to the National Gallery of Art in 1977, now in the Gallery Archives. [4] The original Duveen Brothers invoice is in Gallery Archives, copy in NGA curatorial files.
NGA object ID 120. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.