Gratitude, Figure for the Demidoff Monument (plaster model)

The girl on her knees, laying a wreath of flowers, stands for gratitude, the thanks of the Tuscan people to Nikolai Demidov, a Russian industrialist and collector who spent his last years in Florence and paid for charitable works there. He died in 1828, and two years later his sons Anatoly and Pavel ordered a monument from Bartolini. In the main group the father embraces the young Anatoly and holds the document that leaves him the family's Tuscan property, while this figure kneels at his feet. The whole thing was meant for a mausoleum in the park of the Demidov villa at San Donato, outside the city. It never went there. Bartolini died with the work unfinished, and in 1869 Pavel gave it to the city of Florence instead. By then Florence was the capital of the new Kingdom of Italy and was rebuilding its riverbanks, so a new square was laid out for the monument on the south bank of the Arno, near the institute Demidov had founded in via San Niccolò. The sculptor's pupil Pasquale Romanelli finished it, and it was unveiled there in December 1871, in the square that still carries the family's name.