GUGLIELMO PUGI AND ÉDOUARD DROUOT | PAIR OF MUSICIANS

Though not conceived together, these music-making maidens in coloured marble make for a sumptuous pair.  

The harp-player is the work of the successful Florentine sculptor Guglielmo Pugi, whose studio created a number of figures using different coloured marbles. The woman's skin tones are rendered in white Carrara marble, while her dress assumes the vibrant colour of Breccia Violetta marble, and her wreath and her harp is made of green patinated bronze.

Her accompanist plays the aulos, a wind instrument used in ancient Greece during religious and social rites. Here the white marble of her skin is set against Brecche Violette, an amphora of Red Griotte marble, and water carved in translucent alabaster. The prolific French sculptor Édouard Drouot, who specialised in genre sculpture, conceived several models of pipe-playing musicians. These were mostly executed in bronze, while marbles by Drouot are relatively rare.