{
"data": {
"id": 150053,
"accession_number": "1980.264",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Head of an Italian Woman, c. 1847. Jean-L\u00e9on G\u00e9r\u00f4me (French, 1824\u20131904). Oil on fabric; framed: 60 x 51 x 6 cm (23 5/8 x 20 1/16 x 2 3/8 in.); unframed: 44.5 x 36 cm (17 1/2 x 14 3/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Noah L. Butkin, 1980.264",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Head of an Italian Woman",
"creation_date": "c. 1847",
"creation_date_earliest": 1847,
"creation_date_latest": 1860,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 19th century"
],
"technique": "oil on fabric",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Modern European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Framed: 60 x 51 x 6 cm (23 5/8 x 20 1/16 x 2 3/8 in.); Unframed: 44.5 x 36 cm (17 1/2 x 14 3/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 0.6,
"height_inch": 23,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.625,
"width": 0.51,
"width_inch": 20,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0625,
"depth": 0.06,
"depth_inch": 2,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.375
},
"unframed": {
"height": 0.445,
"height_inch": 17,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.5,
"width": 0.36,
"width_inch": 14,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.1875
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signed right: j. l. gerome / 1844 / roma \r\n\r\n\r\n",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 304521,
"title": "Year in Review: 1980",
"description": "Year in Review: 1980. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (June 24-July 19, 1981).",
"opening_date": "1981-06-24T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 220660,
"title": "Jean-L\u00e9on G\u00e9r\u00f4me",
"description": "Jean-L\u00e9on G\u00e9r\u00f4me. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA (June 15-September 12, 2010); Mus\u00e9e d'Orsay, Paris, France (organizer) (October 18, 2010-January 23, 2011).",
"opening_date": "2010-06-15T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (6/15/2010 - 9/12/2010) and Mus\u00e9e d'Orsay, Paris (10/18/2010 - 1/23/2011): \"Jean-L\u00e9on G\u00e9r\u00f4me\"",
"opening_date": "2010-06-15T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Perhaps Italienne commissioned from the artist by Joseph Courcelles, Vesoul, before 1847. Goupil to Hoey, New York, 1867, as an \u00e9tude, for ff 250. Probably acquired as T\u00eate d'Italienne from G\u00e9r\u00f4me by Goupil, May 1871, for ff 2,250 and sold to Everard, London, for ff 3,000, and then Goupil bought it back in London, May 1871, for ff 3,500 and sold it 31 July 1871 to Knoedler, New York, for ff 4,000 francs on a fixed account.3 Boussod, Valadon & Cie to Delmonico, New York, 1885. Belgian private collection. Christie's, London, 20 February 1976 (lot 153, repr.), Study of a Roman, property of a Belgian private collector, \u00a3400. Shepherd Gallery, New York. Mr. and Mrs. Noah L. Butkin, Cleveland. Bequeathed to the CMA in 1980.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "G\u00e9r\u00f4me spent the years 1843 and 1844 in Rome, where this work was painted. The woman's severe expression and drapery recall ancient Roman statuary as well as the 19th-century belief that the essence of the antique could still be found amid the ruins and people of contemporary Rome.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19861834"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1980.264-head-of-an-italian-w"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Lee, Sherman E. \u201cThe Year in Review for 1980.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (June 1981): 163\u2013219.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 176; Mentioned: 212, no. 53",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25159730"
},
{
"citation": "Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: P. 290-293, Vol. I, no. 104",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Ackerman, Gerald M. Jean-Le\u0301on Ge\u0301ro\u0302me: monographie re\u0301vise\u0301e, catalogue raisonne\u0301 mis a\u0300 jour. Courbevoie: ACR, 2000.",
"page_number": "Reproduced and mentioned: p. 210-211, cat. 9",
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1980.264",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1980.264/1980.264_web.jpg",
"width": "713",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "417006",
"filename": "1980.264_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1980.264/1980.264_print.jpg",
"width": "2713",
"height": "3400",
"filesize": "6399608",
"filename": "1980.264_print.jpg"
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"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1980.264/1980.264_full.tif",
"width": "4788",
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},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Bequest of Noah L. Butkin",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 150053,
"creators": [
{
"id": 1694,
"description": "Jean-L\u00e9on G\u00e9r\u00f4me (French, 1824\u20131904)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Born in Vesoul near the Swiss border, Jean-L\u00e9on G\u00e9r\u00f4me grew up in comfort. His goldsmith father approved of his decision to become an artist and supported his study in Paris with Delaroche (q.v.) during the early 1840s. Delaroche's interest in historical reconstruction, precise detail, and smooth picture surface had a significant effect on the young student. After failing to win the Prix de Rome in 1846, which his father pressured him to enter, G\u00e9r\u00f4me decided to make his name at the Salons. His debut there in 1847 with A Cock Fight (Mus\u00e9e d'Orsay, Paris) was a huge success and brought him and his fellow neo-Grecs, as they were called, much attention. Several important commissions and purchases followed, including church decoration and the huge historical picture The Age of Augustus (Mus\u00e9e d'Orsay, Paris) that emulated the kind of classicizing panorama of Delaroche in the hemicycle for the \u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts. G\u00e9r\u00f4me also studied briefly with Charles Gleyre (1808-1874) after Delaroche closed his studio in 1842. Gleyre's travel and sketches from the Near and Middle East may also have played a critical role in introducing the young artist to another major interest of his career, orientalist subject matter. With the twenty thousand francs paid for The Age of Augustus, the artist treated himself to a trip to Constantinople with his actor-friend Edmond Got. Further travels to the Middle East followed, and G\u00e9r\u00f4me exhibited his first Egyptian themes in the 1857 Salon. \r\nIn the 1878 Universal Exposition in Paris, he exhibited his first attempts at sculpture, which corresponded closely with his painted works, first following their themes, then serving as models for his canvases, especially the Pygmalion pictures. During the 1880s he was, like several other artists, drawn to incorporate polychromy and various precious and semi-precious materials into his sculpture; this was known to be a widespread practice among ancient sculptors, and it heightened the illusion of lifelikeness as well as the decorative aspect of these works. \r\nAlthough he had not succeeded at the \u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts, G\u00e9r\u00f4me received one of three prestigious professorships in 1863 following the somewhat controversial reforms of the fine arts institutions in Paris. His official rather than academic achievements made him a good candidate to lead the new generation of French painters out of the decadence into which many believed French art had fallen. He taught hundreds of students in his atelier at the \u00c9cole as well as at his independent studio and had an especially strong impact on his American students, such as Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) and Frederick Arthur Bridgman (1847-1928). Although the majority of G\u00e9r\u00f4me's students remember him as an exacting but fair master, he showed intractable resistance to the new modes of impressionism and symbolism and campaigned against the acceptance of Gustave Caillebotte's (1843-1893) bequest of such art to the French state. \r\nIn 1863 G\u00e9r\u00f4me married Marie Goupil, the daughter of well-known international art dealer Adolphe Goupil, who became the exclusive representative of his work. Goupil not only sold his son-in-law's pictures through his branches in Europe and New York, but he also disseminated their reputation through photographic reproductions.1 G\u00e9r\u00f4me received all the highest honors awarded to nineteenth-century artists and achieved considerable financial success.\r\n1. See Linda Whiteley, \"Goupil, (Jean-Michel-) Adolphe,\" Dictionary of Art (London, 1996), 13:228; and Mus\u00e9e Goupil, Conservatoire de L'image Industrielle Bordeaux, \u00c9tat des lieux 1 (Bordeaux, 1994), esp. 9-36.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1824",
"death_year": "1904",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1980-12-19T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1847,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "c. 1847",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": true,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-09-16 16:20:07.902000"
}
}