Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Child at the Breast
Medardo Rosso Italian
Not on view
Described by one art historian as "congealed lava," this molten, highly abstract, and seemingly incomplete sculpture of a nursing child makes great demands on the viewer’s powers of recognition. Only reluctantly do the two figures’ salient features emerge: a baby’s head and arms along with a mother’s breast and hands. We are provided with barely enough sculptural information to identify the scene. Rosso’s 1910–14 version, seen here, differs from the more realistic 1889 model, which included the mother’s head. The original sitters for this sculpture were Marie-Louise and Marthe Alexis, the wife and second daughter, respectively, of the naturalist writer Paul Alexis, whom Rosso met upon his 1889 arrival in Paris.
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