Paolo Samengo and Amalia Brugnoli in Une Heure à Naples (Sketches in the King's Theatre, No. 5). Lithograph coloured by hand after a drawing by Levasseur, 1832

Two dancers, the ballerina standing on point with her back to the viewer, her left arm above her head and her hand held by her partner; her right arm curves behind her partner's back. The man stands on tip-toe, his other leg stretched out at 90o to his right side; his left arm is curved above his head, framing the face, and his left arm is held up to hold his partner's hand. The ballerina wears blue ballet slippers and a yellow knee-length dress, with a low neck trimmed with white, and large puff sleeves; the skirt is trimmed with a spray of flowers and foliage; on her hands are long white gloves and on her hair is a floral coronet. The man wears a brown hat trimmed with ostrich feathers. His elaborate pink skirted tunic has a decorative pale blue band at the hem, decorated with scrolls; above the pink bodice is a pale blue shirt gathered into the neck; the long white sleeves are overlaid on the upper arm with large pink puff sleeves, overlaid with pale blue bands.

Given by Dame Marie Rambert

Amalia Brugnoli was an early exponent of pointe work. She had considerable success throughout Europe in the 1820s, often dancing with her husband, Paolo Samengo. The print is one of a series, Sketches in the King's Theatre, showing Samingo and Brugnoli in various ballets. It is not recorded how many prints made up the series; Chaffee in The Romantic Ballet in London (Dance Index September-December 1943) lists five.
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.

Amalia Brugnoli is dancing on pointe (on the tips of her toes). This is first recorded as an acrobatic trick in the 1820s; by the early 1830s it was becoming an essential part of the ballerina's technique, although it was not until La Sylphide in 1832 that a choreographer used it expressively to suggest character and mood. The shoes gave little support, the only stiffening being a little darning at the back of the toes; the modern pointe shoe, with its flat, blocked toe, did not develop until much later in the 19th century.
The costumes are moving away from fashion to beomc 'conventional' dance costume. There is some attempt at 'historic' realism in the man's costume; the ballerina's dress is fashionable in her large puffed sleeves, but otherwise, her costume is moving towards the fitted bodice and bell-shaped skirt that will become the ballerina's 'uniform'. Given that the ballet is set in Naples, it might be that fancy dress is part of the plot - say a carnival.

E.5045-1968