Costume design by P Croce for a Potato in the ballet in Amor, late 19th century

Costume design by P Croce for a Potato in the ballet in Amor. Brown potato-shaped body covering head and neck and body to knees, the arms and legs covered with single 'leaves', and a scarf headdress like a pudding basin tied with a white band above lower edge. Pen and ink and watercolour over pencil. Annotated.

Cyril W. Beaumont Bequest

This costume was designed for the ballet Amor, and may relate to the ballet with choreography by Luigi Manzotti premiered at La Scala, Milan, in 1886. Although unsigned it is clearly one of the group of designs by P Croce which came to the Museum as part of the Cyril Beaumont Bequest and was probably acquired by him as illustrations for his various publications on design for the ballet. Four of the designs (this design S.235-2000, with S.232-2000, S.235-2000 and S.354-2001) from the group of ten in the collection were reproduced in Beaumont's Five Centuries of Ballet Design, published by The Studio Ltd, London, nd.

Historical significance: An example of a costume in the shape of a vegetable from one of the large spectacular realistic productions which characterised Italian ballet in the late 19th century.

S.235-2000