The Vow of Innocence (The Insensitive)

This is a plaster cast from the marble formerly in Palazzo Bagnara in Naples. Bartolini portrays Innocence as a young woman in the act of making the vow of chastity: crowned by the flowers of sacrifice, her face impassive to avoid being pleasant, and proffering two turtledoves. The work confirms the sculptor's detachment from the Ideal Beauty of neoclassical culture in favour of attention for the Natural Beauty, mediated by the study of fifteenth-century plastic art. Today lost, the marble was ordered by Vincenzo Ruffo di Bagnara, prince of Sant'Antimo, for the palazzo n Largo Mercantello, today Piazza Dante, in Naples.