Scenes from the life of a colourful ancestor uncovered at Wisbech Museum

A family has been helped to dig up bitter-sweet memories of an ancestor to be proud of by Wisbech and Fenland Museum.

The Italian sculptor Pellegrino Mazzotti was born in Tuscany in 1795 and died in Wisbech workhouse aged 85 after a colourful career making fashionable plaster busts and death masks of historic figures and contemporary celebrities including Lord Nelson.

His great-great-great-grandson Graham Blankley, from Chesterfield, tracked him down to Wisbech after relatives started tracing the family history.

Graham, who visited the museum with his wife Margaret, said: “My sister in Australia bought Mazzotti's bust of Nelson and my uncle has been to Italy to try to find ancestors further back without success so far.

“Considering we arrived at Wisbech Museum out of the blue, they were so helpful with looking up information and it was exciting to see his work still on display there after so many years.

“He obviously was quite successful in making a living in Wisbech as the census showed he maintained a studio and lived there, from 1854 until at least 1871. He died in the workhouse in 1879 probably because he was too old or too ill to go on working.”

Pellegrino, known as Pilgrim by his English friends and clients, had studios in Norwich Strangers Hall, where there's a plaque to remember him, and Ely as well as Wisbech, where he donated four busts – still on display – to the then newly opened museum.

One of his busts of Nelson is in the National Maritime Museum and his head of Shakespeare is in the Octavia Hill Birthplace Museum in Wisbech.

Graham and Margaret Blankley at the museum with two plaster heads sculpted by his ancestor Pellegrino Mazzotti.