Portrait bust of Mrs Mary Geraldine Trafford (Mary Bedingfeld, 1840-1869)
Giuseppe Benzoni (fl.1870)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1870 (signed and dated) - 1870
Materials
Marble
Measurements
723 mm (H)460 mm (W)300 mm (D)
Place of origin
Rome
Order this imageCollection
Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk
NT 1210480
Summary
Sculpture, marble; Portrait bust of Mary Geraldine Bedingfeld, later Mrs E.S. Trafford (c. 1840-1867); Giuseppe Benzoni (fl. 1870), 1870, Italy, Rome. The portrait bust was made in memory of the subject, who had died the previous year at the age of just 28. The Bedingfelds also commissioned a memorial from the Roman sculptor Giovanni Maria Benzoni (1809-1873, now in the Chapel at Oxburgh Hall. The portrait bust was carved by Giuseppe Benzoni, who must have been one of Benzoni’s sons, several of whom seem to have been employed in their father’s workshops.
Full description
A portrait bust in marble of Mary Geraldine Trafford, née Bedingfeld, showing the sitter looking slightly to her right, wearing a dress tightly buttoned to her neck and with a plaid shawl around her shoulders. She has around her neck a choker necklet, to which is attached a single large pearl and, at her collar, a brooch in the form of a double spiral. Her hair is parted in the centre at front and caught back in a chignon, tied by a plaited ribbon of hair. The bust is signed and dated at the back and is mounted on a marble socle. This is a posthumous portrait of Mary Geraldine Bedingfeld (1840-1869), eldest daughter of Sir Henry Paston-Bedingfeld, 6th Baronet, and his wife Augusta Lucy Clavering. Mary was born on 26 October 1840, in Cheltenham. She married Edward Southwell Trafford of Wroxham Hall Norfolk on 8 October 1867, but died less than two years later, on 10 August 1869, after having given birth to a still-born son. She is buried in the churchyard of Saint Mary the Virgin in Wroxham, but a monument in her memory was erected in the chapel at Oxburgh Hall by her husband and her mother. The monument is in the form of a relief depicting Mary Trafford holding her baby child, being ushered heavenwards by an angel. It bears the inscription ‘Mary Geraldine Trafford, who died in childbirth on the 10th August, 1869, to the inexpressible Grief of her devoted husband, and sorrowing mother. R.I.P.’ According to an early photograph in the Fondazione Marco Besso in Rome, the monument is the work of the neoclassical sculptor Giovanni Maria Benzoni (1809-1873). Born in Bergamo, in 1828 Benzoni moved as a young man to Rome, where he settled and remained for the remainder of his life, setting up his own studio in 1832. Benzoni became a highly successful sculptor both within Italy and abroad, making monuments as well as figure compositions in the neo-classical style, his work becoming very popular in Britain. His marble groups of Fidelity and Gratitude were exhibited at the 1851 Great Exhibition, a year in which the sculptor visited Britain and is known to have received at least twenty-five active commissions from British clients. Benzoni’s works appear quite frequently on the art market, for example an Allegory of Hope (La Speranza), signed and dated 1857 (19th and 20th Century Sculpture, Sotheby’s London, 10 July 2019, lot 34). This was a version of Benzoni’s statue entitled Hope that was exhibited in London in 1862, at the 1862 International Exhibition. One reviewer of the exhibition described sculpture by Benzoni and his Italian contemporaries, a softened form of neo-classicism, as belonging to the 'school of Italian Romance'. If Giovanni Maria Benzoni made the monument to Mary Trafford, then it seems very likely that the otherwise unknown Giuseppe Benzoni was one of his sons. Another son, Giovanni Battista, signed a version of his father’s highly successful statue of Ruth, now in Todmorden Town Hall. The portrait bust may have been modelled by the sculptor from a gouache portrait of Mary (NT 1210345), in which she wears the same pearl on a choker and the same spiral brooch, jewellery that was presumably highly personal to her. Jeremy Warren January 2025
Provenance
Part of the Bedingfeld Collection. Given with the house, as part of the Bedingfeld Collection, in 1952 by Sybil, Lady Bedingfeld (1883-1985), her daughter Mrs Greathead, and her niece Violet Hartcup.
Marks and inscriptions
Signature on back of socle:: GIUSEPPE. BENZONI. F. ROMA / A. 1870
Makers and roles
Giuseppe Benzoni (fl.1870), sculptor