Pair Of Oriental Moor Busts In Polychrome Marbles And Gilt Bronze – Austro-italian Area, Late 1

Refined pair of busts depicting young Moors in oriental attire, finely carved with great decorative sensibility in the second half of the 19th century, between Vienna and Venice, in full Orientalist fashion.
The faces, sculpted in Belgian black marble, are rendered with striking naturalism and expression. The richly worked turbans are crafted in tortoiseshell alabaster and rosso antico marble, and adorned with a central gilt bronze brooch featuring a delicately chased feather. The draped mantle, in pale alabaster, flows elegantly over the shoulders and rests on a tunic of red marble decorated with six gilt floral appliqués, resembling ornamental froggings.
Each bust stands on a multi-tiered base, consisting of a Belgian black marble plinth and a turned section in Bardiglio grey marble.
These busts are emblematic of the late 19th-century decorative sculpture tradition and belong to the typology of “gallery Moors”: precious, eclectic objects that reflect the fascination with exoticism and the virtuosity of stone carving in the context of historicism and orientalism.