Bust of Paolo Toschi

Tommaso Bandini (1807-1849)
19th century, White marble

Paolo Toschi, an engraver and architect, was born in Parma and spent his life there, with the sole exception of a period of study in Paris where he went to deepen his knowledge of engraving techniques. At home, he taught at the Academy of Fine Arts, becoming director in 1820; during the government of Maria Luisa of Austria he became Superintendent of the Ducal Buildings and was very active in the public works of the Duchy, including the Teatro Regio. Bandini was employed by Toschi’s architectural practice and was acquainted with him as a teacher at the academy in the years prior to his move to Florence, where he moved after winning an artistic stipend for a period of eighteen months, which he spent in the studio of Lorenzo Bartolini. This experience with Bartolini allowed him to go beyond neoclassical formulas to try his hand at a different kind of naturalism and to find more truth in his expression. In 1838, by then a professor at the Academy, he sculpted the Bust of Paolo Toschi, in the version now in the Museo dell'Istituto Statale d'Arte in his native Parma; that prototype was followed by others, including this one in the collection.