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EGISTO ROSSI
(Florence 1824/25-1899)
A FAKE DRAWING AFTER LORENZO BARTOLINI

Pen and brown ink, on laid paper lightly washed in brown. Inscribed in pen di Lorenzo Bartolini. On the verso sketches of figures in black chalk. 204 x 140 mm.
In the present case Rossi created a fake Bartolini drawing, connected with Bartolini's celebrated sculpture La Fiducia in Dio.
Bartolini's original drawing is now at the Uffizi. It is quite interesting to note that it was bought from Egisto Rossi himself.

A Tuscan sculptor, active in Florence in the second half of the Nineteenth century, Rossi made numerous busts and portraits, statues and bas-reliefs and several sepulchral monuments. The artist was also a forger of drawings. See R. J. M. Olson, Caveat Emptor Egisto Rossi's activity as a forger of drawings, in Master drawings, XX, no 2 (1982), p. 151.