The marble statue from Yurjevich collection. History of definition

Abstract

This article is devoted to the problem of name’s identification of original marble statue, made by extremely popular in 19th century Italian sculptor Salvatore Albano. The statue came to the museum soon after the revolution of 1917 from the noble family collection of Yurievich. In the museum inventory it was recorded as “Sleeping angel”. But the figure is clearly female, which contradicts iconographic canons. It is obvious that the author’s name was distorted because of the errors in records or lost documents, which often happened in the first post-revolutionary years. The list of works of the sculptor, compiled by his close friend, a famous Italian scholar and writer, count Angelo De Gubernatis, helped to return the author’s name of the statue.