Sonnabend Gallery, New York
Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above in 1986)
Sotheby's, New York, November 14, 2001, lot 45
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Giancarlo Politi, ``Interview'', Flash Art, no. 132, February - March 1987, illustrated in color on the cover
Veit Loers,  Schlaf der vernuft, Museum Friedericinaum Kassel, February 1988, pp. 111-115
Daniel Templon, ed., Exposition Inaugurale, Musée Temporaire, Fondation Templon, 1989, pp. 92-93
Peter Schjeldahl, Objectives: the New Sculpture, Newport Harbor Art Museum, 1990, pp. 82-99
Angelika Muthesius, ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne, 1992, p. 91, pl. no. 7, illustrated in color (another example)
Anthony d'Offay, ed., The Jeff Koons Handbook, New York, 1992, p. 158
Exh. Cat., San Francisco, Museum of Modern Art, Jeff Koons, 1992, pl. 35, illustrated in color (another example)
Exh. Cat., Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, Jeff Koons, 1993, p. 51, illustrated in color (another example)
Exh. Cat., Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Jeff Koons: Retrospective, 1993, p. 51, pl. no. 35, illustrated in color (another example)
Jessica Morgan, The Mediated Object: Selections from the Eli Broad Collections , Harvard University Art Museum Gallery, March 1996, illustrated in color on the cover (another example)
Exh. Cat., London, Serpentine Gallery, Give and Take,  2001, pp. 24-25
Exh. Cat., Oslo, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Jeff Koons Retrospective, 2004. p. 55, pl., illustrated in color
Exh. Cat., New York, C&M Arts, Jeff Koons: Highlights of 25 Years, 2004, pl. no. 24, illustrated in𒅌 color (another example)

Italian Woman is considered one of the centerpieces of Jeff Koons' Statuary series which began its realization in the artist's breakthrough year of 1986.  Joined in this seminal series by other masterworks such as Rabbit and Louis XVI, the work is based on the statuary representations of various periods and themes within the course of Western European art history. The Italian Woman references an artist's plight to capture the image of "beauty" while simultaneously stripping it of individuality and spirit. The glistening beauty of Italian Woman cannot fail to seduce. In the new century, her sheer elegance and magnificence speaks to us of an age gone by, which is further reflected in the sparkling luminosity of the stainless steel from which she is made. Arrayed in the attire of her day, the semicircle of roses which adorn her torso completes the story of decadent ornament. The subject is Lucia Mondella, a central character in Alessandro Manzoni's novel The Betrothed from 1834. As a Romantic historical novel of life in Milan in the 17th Century, the book was shocking for its time, in its use of the leading lady, Lucia Mondella, as an object of desire. Koons has turned this sculpture, based on an existing 19th century model of the 17^th century subject, into a newly invigorated art object of stainless steel, which has somehow been sapped of her original character: she is no longer a unique individual but exists as a stereotype of style and beauty. Koons has underlined this fact by removing her name from the title and giving her a generic name, Italian Woman. The references to her origins are still there - her name on the base, the book on which she rests, the style of her hair, the typical jewelry and dress - but these are only present as devices of taste not individual description or persona.  Appropriated and re-invented, Koons' Italian Woman successfully reconfigures the familiarity of our visual hist🍷ory and makes it a part of his, and our, newly tweaked aesthetic vocabulary.

Jeff Koons established himself as one of the key artist of the turn of the 21^st century - and art history may well prove that he was right all along. Jim Lewis attribuಞtes the mystery behind his works and his success to our inability or unwillingness to recognize that art's own aptitude for lessons in degeneracy is part of what makes Koons' work so difficult to grasp. The viewer cannot help but think that his objects must be in the service of parody or social and aesthetic critique. Whether they are or they are not, nothing either in his works themselves or in Koons' statements give any indication either way. The quandary seems to have more to do with our fixed idea of what Koons must mean, or in a bigger sense what art should or must mean.