Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Ecce Puer
Medardo Rosso Italian
Not on view
Rosso’s Ecce Puer exemplifies what one writer has called "potential images," which depend on a beholder actively engaged in and aware of the process of looking. The subject here is Alfred William Mond, a young boy the artist was commissioned to portray during a 1906 visit to London. Rosso caught Alfred peeking out from and then vanishing behind a curtain: the artist quickly recognized this as the motif he wished to represent. The deep striations covering the boy’s face and upper chest suggest the curtain’s folds. The effect is not unlike that of a snapshot—a fleeting, instantaneous view caught and preserved for eternity. In this late cast, Rosso used painted plaster to simulate the dark color of bronze.
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