Meditating with Paul Troubetzkoy (1866-1938)

WHEN AN ARTIST represents a mother and her child, it doesn’t take a great psychologist to sense that her family history has things to tell.

Take the case of Russian-Italian sculptor Paul Petrovich Troubetzkoy, for example. If his father, Piotr (1822-1892), diplomat and traveler, was part of an old aristocratic Russian family, things were more complex on his mother’s side. Ada Winans, American singer, meets Piotr Troubetzkoy in Italy. He, married in Russia to a woman who remained in the country, falls in love with her.

Three boys – Pietro, Paolo, Luigi – will be born in three years of romance, all registered under an assumed name, while the divorce from the Russian wife is finalized. In 1884, when his father’s financial affairs were going badly, the mother and siblings took refuge in Milan (Italy) where Paolo, with an independent and exuberant character, went to learn his trade as a sculptor. His plasters and bronzes quickly made him famous.

So, does this young woman who hugs her child have the features of Ada, the sculptor’s mother or those of Marie, the British writer who will become his second wife? Squatting, this mother lets her large dress become the secure base of a salutary embrace. In the swirling folds of the clothes, the tenderness of the faces offers a little calm. The eternal time of a delicate kiss on the head.