Bust of the Empress Eugenie

This bust of the Empress Eugenie, was an official commission to Marcello, the artist name of Adèle d'Affry, Duchess of Castiglione- Colonna. Widowed at the age of 20 - she never wanted to remarry - ,she decided to become a sculptor. She settled in Paris, copying the masters at the Louvre and working with live models. Although she was not allowed to enroll at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, which was inaccessible to women, she managed, dressed up as a man, to attend dissection classes. At the beginning of her career, she took the pseudonym Marcello to escape her status of woman and aristocrat. Her sculptures, inspired by Michelangelo, were met with great success. She was also a woman of the world, close to Emperor Napoleon III and Eugenie. In the last years of her life, she turned to painting, before dying of tuberculosis at the age of 43.