Leonardo Bistolfi

Leonardo Bistolfi

(Casale Monferrato, 1859 - La Loggia, 1933)

Allegory of Victory

Beautiful and suggestive bronze sculpture, with a strong dark patina typical of the well-known Piedmontese sculptor, a signed and dated work (1906); measuring approximately 60x22x24.5 cm;

Executed in 1906, it bears the stamp of the Fumagalli / Turin foundry; similar to the specimen preserved at the Revoltella Museum in Trieste, dedicated to A. Hortis; it was published and illustrated in the catalog of the exhibition held in Casale Monferrato in 1984, "Bistolfi 1859 - 1933, the path of a symbolist sculptor": the catalog entry reports that in 1906, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the newspaper "Il Piccolo" of Trieste, its director Teodoro Mayer commissioned Bistolfi to create a bronze sculpture to be given to his supporting friends and to the most representative politicians of the national party; the sculpture depicts a naked young man, symbolizing the Piccolo, with a woman behind him who bows to whisper something in his ear: the irredentist meaning of the group was immediately understood by everyone: the woman represents Italy, the flag is the Tricolore and the suggestion that Italy whispers in the young man's ear is an incitement to reconquer the unredeemed lands; the composition of the group, with one figure rising and bowing over the other, will later be further developed by Bistolfi in some of his monumental sculptures, and will become the compositional solution of his small monuments to the fallen; the present sculpture is dedicated to the well-known anthropologist and criminologist Alfredo Niceforo (inscribed on the edge of the base "To Alfredo Niceforo / on the 25th Anniversary of "Il Piccolo" / Teodoro Mayer". (cf. Sotheby's, 2006) (Private collection)