Abel at The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

myminifactory

In an open contest run by the Accademia di Belle Arti, Giovanni Dupre won first prize with a Judgment of Paris and made his reputation with the life-size figure of the dead Abel, which was purchased for Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaievna, Duchess of Leuchtenberg (now at the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg) and was replicated in bronze, c. 1839, (now in the Galleria d'arte moderna, Palazzo Pitti, Florence). The raw naturalism of the figure, greeted with shock at the time, presaged the beginning of the end of Neoclassicism in Italian sculpture and gained Dupré the encouragement of Lorenzo Bartolini. He followed this with a more classical Cain (1840, also in marble at the Hermitage Museum and in bronze at the Pitti). He followed with figures ofGiotto and Saint Antonino of Florence for façade niches on the Uffizi, and a bust of Pius II for the Church of San Domenico (Siena) in Siena.