Female figure

Description

The statue requires a specific study that is beyond the scope of this card. It is a work of remarkable beauty and careful execution , which together with its classical head and delicate face with a detached expression, manifests characters very close to Valerio Cioli. With this attribution it is in fact listed in the photo library of the KunstHistoriches Institut in Florence. Placed next to the 'Reaper' a certain work by Cioli, it seems an ideal pendant, all the more so since in Vascellini's engravings it is still shown in the original gesture, while using a shovel or spade. The tool, long lost, was replaced by some simple fruit placed in the left hand during an unfortunate reintegration in perhaps recent years, as is documented in the Superintendence's photo since today the figure is mutilated of both arms. The eighteenth-century descriptions are of no use for the present sculpture, since only "statues of villane and villani" around the Isolotto are mentioned in general; it should be remembered, however, that Cioli, among the various "living" statues for Boboli , made the 'villano che vanga' still in the Garden