Pio Fedi's The Rape of Polyxena: A Greek Legendary Scene In Nineteenth-Century Italian Sculpture

The Rape of Polyxena is a marble statue located in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence, Italy's Piazza della Signoria. It was sculpted by Pio Fedi in 1868, but it was placed alongside several sculptures from the Renaissance, an immense compliment to his work. The Rape of Polyxena embodies Hellenistic, Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassicist mannerisms regarding its style and theme. Fedi intricately blended multiple styles and stories in order to construct The Rape of Polyxena. The most prominent literary sources of the Greek legend concerning Polyxena are Ovid's Metamorphoses, Euripides' Hecuba, and Bocaccio's Famous Women. This project discusses the various sources of the scene presented and the different sculptures that may have inspired Fedi to create his work. This thesis explores the reason behind the sculpture's placement in the prestigious Loggia dei Lanzi and concludes that Fedi does not adhere to any singular source of the myth, but takes elements from different sources in order to create a new story.