Larkin Goldsmith Mead
American, 1835-1910 (active Italy )

Venezia, 1865
marble
25 1/2 x 17 x 9 1/2 in.

SBMA, Gift of Joanna and Travers Newton in celebration of the museums 50th Anniversary
1991.93.1

COMMENTS

Vermont-born Larkin Mead (1835-1910) was apprenticed at the age of 18 to Henry Kirke Brown (1814-1886) when this prominent American sculptor was engaged in numerous important commissions at his New York studio. Mead returned to his home state two years later to begin the important commissions that mark his career by creating the colossal 19-foor high figure, Vermont, for the state capitol in Montpelier (1857), followed by a statue of Ethan Allen (1861), a replica of which can be seen in Washington, D.C. as well. In 1862 he took the path already established by an earlier generation of American sculptors and traveled to Italy where he based himself in Florence (at a time when many of his fellow American were gravitating toward Rome.) In order to substitute for his brother-in-law William Dean Howels, he occasionally traveled to Venice to serve as vice-consul. The results of these visits are the allegorical sculpture Venezia and his marriage to a Venetian woman, Marietta di Benvenuti, who may have served as a model for the marble bust. Among the work Mead produced from his Florence studio were ambitious commissions such as the Lincoln portrait now in Springfield, Illinois and the elaborate accompanying figure groups representing the Navy, Infantry, Artillery and Calvary (1870-1880) which contributed to his reputation as the most famous American sculptor working abroad in the last quarter of the 19th century.

SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS

Mead was born in Vermont, but spent fifty years working in Florence. He met his wife in Venice, and used her as the model for this allegorical portrait of the watery city. This subject was apparently quite popular with collectors, as it exists in at least ten marble versions. Venezia is shown wearing a tiara decorated with beads and a scalloped shell with a small gondola on top of it. Her youthful beauty is further enhanced by the seafoam bodice, an appropriate allusion for the city known as “the bride of the sea.”

- Ridley-Tree Reinstallation, 2022