Two beautiful life-size portrait busts of an elderly man and a woman. In marble, the two are excellently carved. Strict and restrained in neat clothes, they look tight in front of them. Who they are, unfortunately, is not known. From their clothes it can be seen that they lived at the end of the nineteenth century.
Both statues are signed L. Conti. Luigi Conti has been an excellent sculptor given the quality of these two busts. Something has become known about him and his work after some investigation. Luigi Conti does not appear in the artists ' lexicon. He seems to be a forgotten sculptor as there are so many.
However, nothing could be further from the truth. Luigi Conti turns out to be a sculptor from Trieste who has become famous there for his tomb monuments. He was so well known in the nineteenth century that he also produced grave monuments for wealthy families in Zadar, today in Croatia. His nephew Giovanni Marin is believed to have been his pupil and to have worked with him.
Little is known about Luigi Conti. He was a member of an Artists ' Society in Trieste, where a fellow member and colleague made a sketch of him. This way we can get an impression of the artist.
His nephew Marin has manufactured a bust of him which is kept in the Museo Civico in Trieste.
Luigi Conti had a good eye and sense of art. About him is the anecdote that he discovered in an antique shop a pile of unsigned sketches that he could attribute to Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. He bought a few and sold them at a huge profit to his local fellow collector baron Giuseppe Sartorio. He also bought the other drawings and together with the rest of his collection they now belong to the collection of the Civico Museo Sartorio in Trieste. Of course, it is tempting to assume that Conti depicted this collector and his wife in marble.
Portrait busts in marble of this quality are rare. Portraits were certainly made before photography became commonplace for a variety of reasons. As a memorial portrait, in memory of a deceased, to keep their memory alive and provide comfort. But portraits were also there to show the status of the person portrayed, after all, not everyone could afford to be portrayed and certainly a portrait bust in marble was then status-enhancing.
Although there were of course more reasons to make portraits, the above reasons are the most obvious with regard to these busts. For a sculptor who stood in the middle of society and completed various commissions from dignitaries for grave monuments, both reasons are plausible.
The reason for the commission is now unknown, however, whether it was to confirm the social status of this elderly couple, or to remember them after their death is not of great importance. These two high quality busts help us to not only appreciate the age but also see the technical craftsmanship and quality of these busts.