SIR EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES, BT., A.R.A., R.W.S. | Alessandro di Marco

William Hesketh Lever, Lord Leverhulme;
Phillips, London, 11 March 1997, lot 38;
With Maas Gallery, 1898;
Peter Nahum, London where purchased by the present owner in 1999

Berlin, ‘Drawings and Studies by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Bart’, 1898, number unknown, as ‘Three Studies of Heads’

Scott Thomas Buckle, ‘Is this the Face of Alessandro di Marco? The Forgotten Features of a well-known Italian model’, in The British Art Journal, Vol. XIII, No.2, illustrated p.7 

This drawing is in very good condition. The paper is slightly time-stained but this is overall and therefore not distracting. The paper has not been laid down but is flat in the frame. FRAME This drawing is under glass and contained in a simple wooden and gilt frame with beaded decoration and a clean mount.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Alessandro di Marco was a former organ-grinder from Piedmont in Italy who appears to have first modelled for Frederic Leighton as a small child in Rome in 1853 for Cimabue's Madonna (Royal Collection, on long-term loan to the National Gallery, London) and seems to have made his way to the ateliers of Paris. William Blake Richmond described him as; '... a man who seemed to stride out from Signorelli's grand frescoes... a fellow so graceful and of such a colour, a kind of bronze gold, having a skin of so fine a texture that the movement of every muscle was not disguised, not a film of fat disfigured his shapely limbs. Only a peasant, people say! Yes--but of a race of Kings--so noble he looked.' (Simon Reynolds, William Blake Richmond, p.45) By the late 1860s he was modelling in London for Richmond, Poynter, Leighton, Legros, Solomon and the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. He was also the model for a beautiful drawing of Dante for Dante’s Dream by Rossetti (sold in these rooms, 14 July 2016, lot 17) but perhaps his most remarkable appearance was as the principal figure in The Renaissance of Venus (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) by Walter Crane, whose wife forbid him to study female models. Principal pictures by Burne-Jones for which Alessandro is believed to have sat include The Beguiling of Merlin of 1872-7 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight) and Love Among the Ruins (Christie's, London, 11 July 2013, lot 3) with which the present drawing has been associated. However the study seems more likely to be for The Pilgrim at the Gate of Idleness (Dallas Museum of Art) completed in 1884 as one of the series of pictures illustrating the story of the Romaunt of the Rose.