Welcome to the first website devoted to Marcello, one of the most important sculptors of the nineteenth century...
Marcello (born Adèle d´Affry, 1836-1879) was one of the foremost sculptors working in Paris during the Second Empire and the early years of the Third Republic. She was born in Fribourg, Switzerland, and descended from a long and impressive line of Swiss nobles and military figures. After being privately educated, Affry entered the sculpture studio of Heinrich Max Imhof (1795-1869), under whose direction she learned the basics of sculpture modeling and technique.
In 1856 Affry was married to Carlo Colonna, duke of Castiglione-Altibrandti. Through this marriage she gained the title of Duchess of Castiglione Colonna. Within only a few months, her husband died of typhoid fever in Paris, and Adèle Colonna returned to her native Switzerland.
La Duchesse Colonna de Castiglione
Engraving by L. Dumonz. Published in
L´Illustrateur des dames et de demoiselles, 3 April 1864.
Soon after the death of her husband, Duchess Colonna returned to Imhof's studio in Rome to continue her investigation of sculpture and tried to put her terrible loss behind her. One of her earliest sculptures was a posthumous portrait of her late husband.
In the 1860s, Colonna began to achieve success with her sculptural work. For the Paris Salon of 1863, she submitted three sculptures under the pseudonym Marcello. Though her true identity was discovered soon after the opening of the Salon, she continued to use the pseudonym professionally, as it signified her desire to be treated as an equal among male sculptors. She traveled widely during this period, most often to England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. Marcello became widely known within important artistic and social circles in Europe, and exhibited her work frequently in London and Paris.
Marcello continued to sculpt in the 1870s, but also devoted much of her time to painting. Although she did not find equal critical success for her paintings (because she exhibited them less than her sculptures), she began to paint more and more towards the end of her life because she suffered from tuberculosis. Painting for her was less physically taxing than sculpting.
After a brief career spanning less than two decades, Marcello died in Italy in 1879. Today her work can be found in some of the most prominent museums in the world, including the Musée d´Orsay in Paris, The Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania, and the Dahesh Museum of Art in New York. Her work is highly sought after by collectors, and her work is represented in major private collections in France, Japan, Switzerland and the United States.
