// BBC UK NEWS — CRONACA
Rare marble sculpture mistaken for garden ornament
The rare piece of art lay undetected in a family's garden (L) for more than 70 years until it was cleaned (R)
A rare marble sculpture could fetch up to £18,000 at auction after it spent more than seven decades sitting outside, mistaken for a garden ornament.
The lichen-covered bust from 1854 was discovered by Thomas Jenner-Fust, director of Chorley's Auctioneers, during a routine house valuation in the Cotswolds.
What the family thought was a reconstituted stone bust turned out to be the work of pioneering 19th-Century artist and feminist figure, Harriet Goodhue Hosmer.
Jenner-Fust said it is a reminder that some of the most valuable objects are not tucked away in stately homes but hiding in plain sight, waiting to be rediscovered.
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The statue will go under the hammer at Chorley's Auctioneers in Gloucester later.
Hosmer was an American neoclassical sculptor born in Massachusetts in 1830, and is widely regarded as the first professional female sculptor in the United States.
She spent much of her career in Rome, where she developed an international reputation in a field that was overwhelmingly dominated by men.
Hosmer was also openly gay during a time when same-sex relationships were widely condemned, and in some places, illegal.