Adèle d'Affry
1836–1879 · Franco-Swiss sculptor and painter of the Second Empire, known mainly for her busts
Adèle d'Affry, known in the art world as Marcello, was a sculptor and painter born in Fribourg, Switzerland, in 1836 and who died in 1879. She is remembered above all for her busts, which she exhibited at the Paris Salon. She took her male pseudonym from the eighteenth-century Venetian composer Benedetto Marcello, reflecting her love of music.
Daughter of a family of Swiss military men, she received a classical education and took drawing lessons from Auguste Joseph Dietrich. After a brief marriage to Carlo Colonna, who died in 1856, she settled in Rome and trained with the Swiss sculptor Heinrich Maximilian Imhof. In 1859 she moved to Paris, where she copied works at the Louvre. Although the École des Beaux-Arts rejected her because of her gender, she studied animal drawing with Antoine-Louis Barye and anatomy on her own.
At the 1863 Salon she showed three busts, and her work soon drew attention in imperial circles. Empress Eugénie commissioned a portrait, and one version of the bust was later exhibited at the Paris city hall. Her bust of Eugénie was harshly criticised at the 1866 Salon before being accepted. In 1868 she travelled to Madrid, where she met General Milans del Bosch and modelled his bust.
Her legacy is that of a sculptor who made her way in a field closed to women, with busts valued for their capture of presence and character.