This sculpture is one of the six cast in bronze in 1989, on the basis of the contract with Becchini signed in 1923, using the original polychromatic work in plaster of 1922, part of the Gian Ferrari Collection in the Villa Necchi Campiglio, Milan. The original plaster was produced in Vado Ligure in the spring or summer of 1921 in the hope of an invitation to take part in the 1922 Venice Biennial. It was to have been part of a group of three works: The Dead Mistress, Death and Asleep. The sculpture of a woman in a state of painful ecstasy, abandoned by her lover and hence with no more reason to live, shows the influence of the ideas championed byMario Broglio in his Rome-based magazine Valori Plastici.The sculptor thus focuses attention on volumes, which become pure, elementaryforms, while the humanity of the subject, captured with tender, heartfelt pathos, isperceived at the same time. (Transl. by Paul Metcalfe per Scriptum, Roma)