Frascione Gallery has sold an important sculpture by Giacomo Ginotti to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Giacomo Ginotti (Turin 1845-1897) had a rapid and impressive artistic rise: he emigrated to France at a very young age then returned to Italy after a few years and trained with Vincenzo Vela and Odoardo Tabacchi at the Albertina Academy. He had the opportunity to create his most important masterpieces in Rome, the city where he moved and resided for fifteen years. In 1877 he created the sculpture La Schiava, a work that made him famous internationally; then it was the turn of La Nidia cieca (1880), purchased by King Umberto I of Savoy, and finally his masterpiece: the Pétroleuse vainçue, realized in 1881.
This last work was sold to the Musée d'Orsay precisely because of the link with the history of Paris, it recalls the uprisings of the Paris Commune in 1871, for the link with Lo Schiavo by Carpeaux (also exhibited in the rooms of the Museum and in which Ginotti evidently draws inspiration from for his composition) and for the excellent quality of the casting carried out by one of the last great Piedmontese foundrymen, the Mazzola di Valduggia foundry.