Filippo Colarossi

Filippo Colarossi (21 April 1841 in Picinisco – August 1906) was an Italian artist's model and sculptor who founded the Académie Colarossi in Paris between 1879 and 1880. He is claimed to have died on 25 August 1906 in Paris. however, Duval states that Colarossi died poor and alone in August 1906 in a little town near Naples. Émile-Bayard reports that Colarossi and his wife (unidentified/unconfirmed second wife; the first had died in 1896), having profited from the sale of a building plot in 1916, retired to Picinisco, his natal village, where they presumably stayed until their deaths. Fuss Amoré and des Ombiaux also maintain that Colarossi returned to Italy. Writing in 1924, they maintained that Colarossi had recently returned to Picinisco, having sold some works by the artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903). No female companion is mentioned in this latter source. Biography Leaving Italy Born to poor parents, farm labourer Fiori Colarossi (1779–1853) and his wife Anna (; 1811–?), Colarossi grew up in Picinisco, a small hilltop village south east of Rome, in the Province of Frosinone of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. During the Unification of Italy, the Kingdom fell to the troops led by nationalist and anti-papal general Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882), whereupon it was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy and asset stripped. As a Catholic and loyal royal marine, this was an unwelcome outcome to Colarossi's elder brother Angelo (1836–1916); thus, in late 1860 or in 1861, they made their way, mostly by steam boat (Naples–Marseilles, then Avignon–Lyon), to Paris, France, to escape widespread poverty and obligatory military conscription. It seems another brother, Antonio (1837–?), was waiting there to welcome and help them.