Clarice Vasini, bust a Dominican saint, terracotta Clarice Vasini (Bologna 1732 - 1823) BUST OF DOMINICAN SAINT terracotta sculpture, inscribed on back CLARICE VASINI , 43x54x25 cm The Italian Soprintendenza considers this lot to be a work of national importance and requires it to remain in Italy; it cannot therfore be exported from Italy. Clarice Vasini, a painter and sculptor from Bologna, was a pupil of Domenico Piò in sculpture. Her family already boasted a tradition of female artists. Her mother, Cristina Carla Calza, was the daughter of the third wife of the Veronese painter Antonio, also a painter and the daughter of a Flemish painter. Her artistic education took place within the family and in the 'rooms' of Collina and Pio, to whom she was related through her first husband, Pietro Pignoni. She was named a Clementine academician of honour in 1763, underlining the quality of her production as a painter and sculptor; however, as a woman, she was not allowed to attend classes. Her work was mainly intended for churches and in 1763 she created a Holy Thursday Sepulchre in the Church of the Grada in Bologna, now lost, with terracotta figures painted in faux marble representing the Noli Me Tangere between polychrome terracotta statues of Virtues. According to the Superintendency, 'the work's interest is primarily based on the rarity of the author and the narrowness of her currently known catalogue and that recorded in the sources. Added to this is the interest that the artist represents for historical-artistic studies focusing on women artists in the Bolognese area, of which Vasini represents one of the few existing examples of sculptress, together with Properzia de Rossi and Anna Morandi Manzolini'.