A White Marble Sculpture of Adonis, Signed and Dated E. Wolff, FC, Romae 1835, 1835

Emil Wolff (1802-1879), the nephew of Johan Gottfried Schadow, was born in Berlin and studied at the Akademie from 1815. In 1818 he worked in the studio of his uncle and in 1822 he went to Rome where he remained until his death. There he took over the studio given to Ridolfo Schadow by Christian Daniel Rauch. In collaboration with Bertel Thorvaldsen and under his influence, Wolff completed Schadow's unfinished marble group of Achilles and Penthesilea, preserved in the Staatliche Museen in Berlin. He also produced for him a funerary monument in 1823, preserved at the church of S. Andrea delle Fratte. Wolff was able to arrange purchases of antiquities for the Prussian collections through his contact with German archaeologists and with Rauch in Berlin. In 1836, at his own expense, he provided the terracotta pediment of the newly built Archaeologisches Institut in Rome, for which he also produced numerous portrait busts, including those of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Carlo Fea and Carl Niebuhr. On commission from Ludwig I of Bavaria, he sculpted the colossal marble bust of Winckelmann for the Villa Albani preserved in situ.