Wallace Collection Online - The Circassian Slave

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Raffaele Monti (1818 - 1881) The Circassian Slave London: Date: c. 1851 - 1855

Object Type: Statuette

Medium: Marble

Height: 34.2 cm
Width: 26.7 cm
Depth: 26.6 cm

Inv: S43

Location: West Gallery III

Monti showed great promise during his studies in Milan, and went later to Vienna where he executed a number of portraits of members of the imperial family. He came to England in 1846. His Veiled Vestal, made for the duke of Devonshire, gained him immediate fame, and thereafter he was best known for his remarkably illusionistic veiled figures. This sculpture is a reduced version of his ‘Circassian slave at the market place in Constantinople’, as it was described in the official catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851, at which it was shown. Circassia is a region in the North Caucasus along the northeast shore of the Black Sea. At the time of the Great Exhibition, visitors would have been aware of the Circassians, who were victims of ethnic cleansing during the brutal war with Russia that ended in 1864.

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