Bust of a gentleman

Francesco Orso (?-1799)
18th century, Terracotta

The terracotta presented here is one of only a handful of works executed in this material by the Piedmontese artist Francesco Orso, who mainly worked in wax. He was active during the second half of the eighteenth century and was the only sculptor in Piedmont to specialise in making polychromed wax portraits of members of the Savoy court, in which he attained a stunning realism. He was also the only Italian sculptor to permanently move to Paris, establishing himself there in 1785. As a result, he experienced the crucial moments of the French Revolution firsthand. In Paris, Orso, who had changed his name to Orsy, opened an exhibition in which the wax figures were at times so centred on the events of the Revolution that they were considered shocking. It is not known if Orso created these rare terracottas at the same time as he was working with wax or if his career’s decline had led him to focus only on sculpture, but in this portrait, we can see that Orso had fully adapted to the canonical Parisian style: the elegant gentleman is wearing an open, embellished tail coat, with a cravat tied into a bow peeking out, and the masterfully rendered hairstyle is inspired by the French fashion of the day.