Head of Giuseppe Garibaldi - SOLD

It is the portrait of the most popular “international” hero of the Risorgimento, a military man, politician, and charismatic figure sometimes seen as divine, this splendid bronze head of Garibaldi: one can find everything about him  books, monographs, fascinating stories, epic tales between myth and legend, photographs, prints, paintings, sculptures.  The author of this work, signed on the back, is Ercole Rosa (S. Severino Marche, Mc 1846 - Rome 1893), a Roman sculptor who was a “storyteller” of the heroes of the Risorgimento.    Fame came with the creation of the monument to the brothers Enrico and Giovanni Cairoli, made by Rosa to commemorate the death of the two patriots in the clash at Villa Glori during the campaign of the Roman countryside organized by Garibaldi (now located at the Pincio in Rome).  As Baldassarre Odescalchi reports in Gli studi di Roma. Ricordi artistici, Francesco Capaccini Editore, Rome, 1875 “With his sculpture he has managed to move the public more than interest it, more than achieve success,” (p.44).  Different times!!! Sculptors often create their works of art using photographic memories, as in the case of the effigy of Manzoni, which Rosa made based on paper material. Not for this portrait. “Garibaldi then wanted to make an exception for the sculptor of the Cairoli brothers, granting him the singular favor of portraying him from life … He reproduced him in his now historical costume. He was very good at capturing the expression of that stern and characteristic physiognomy; and especially that singular construction of the frontal bone which denotes so much resolution and so much energy." (p. 51) The author has depicted the splendid bronze of Garibaldi's head, resting on a marble base, with one of its distinctive features, which in addition to his poncho was  the “smoking cap” used in the second half of the nineteenth century and made even more famous by an unaware influencer. Height: 45 cm