An Italian dancer in La Fille de marbre. Lithograph coloured by hand by A Lacauchie.

A female dancer stands on pointe on her left foot, her right stretched behind. Her body is half-turned, her head looks across her left shoulder. In her right hand she holds a lyre, and her left hand reaches across the body to pluck the strings. Her hair is severely dressed; two pink looped knots sit over the ears and, the headdress is a length of fabric striped white, pink and pale blue, which hangs down her back from a flat, square crown. Her fitted, low-necked black bodice finishes in a point centre front and is laced across a yellow-gold blouse; at the shoulders and elbows are white puffs to which the upper and lower yellow-gold sleeves are fixed with tiny black bows at the shoulder. The lyre is coloured yellow-gold. The bell-shaped, knee-length skirt is pale crimson with three narrow yellow bands around the hem. Her shoes are coloured black.
Signed on the stone "A Lacauchie"

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

The print is labelled: Gallerie Dramatique Academie Royale de musique no 384. The Gallerie Dramatique was one of several large-scale series of prints published in the 19th century, recording performers or costume in French theatre. It numbered 993 plates published in ten volumes.
The print is part of the collection of dance prints amassed by Marie Rambert and her husband, Ashley Dukes in the first half of the 20th century. Eventually numbering 145 items, some of which had belonged to the ballerina Anna Pavlova, it was one of the first and most important specialist collections in private hands.
Rambert bought the first print as a wedding present but could not bear to give it away. As the collection grew, it was displayed in the bar of the Mercury Theatre, the headquarters of Ballet Rambert, but in 1968, Rambert gave the collection to the Victoria and Albert Museum; seven duplicates were returned to Rambert, but these are catalogued in Ivor Guest's A Gallery of Romantic Ballet, which was published before the collection came to the V&A. Although often referred to as a collection of Romantic Ballet prints, there are also important engravings of 17th and 18th century performers, as well as lithographs from the later 19th century, by which time the great days of the ballet in London and Paris were over.

National dances and settings were popular in the 1840s as audiences became increasingly aware of 'abroad' and exotic locations. Scotland, Spain, Hungary, Poland and the Balkans were all popular settings and some ballets were set as far afield as India, giving the opportunity for balleticized versions of national dances, like the Cachucha, mazurka, polka, polonaise, tarentella or Cracovienne.
The dancer's flat headdress is traditional to the region around Naples. The choreography of her dance would include movements which audiences would recognise, or would come to recognise, as 'Neapolitan' - probably a few authentic steps and rhythms surrounded by conventional ballet steps.

E.4982-1968