Читать книгу The Museo Vincenzo Vela in Ligornetto - Marc-Joachim Wasmer - Страница 14

Although disillusioned and in bad health, Vela devoted himself to domestic politics. In 1877 he was elected to the radical group of the Grand Council of Ticino, where he campaigned strenuously in favour of the weak. Besides, he himself was an example of social emancipation: the son of farmers, he had risen to become a prince among artists, without ever hiding his humble origins.

His solidarity with the oppressed was conveyed in a late work, the manifesto of his ideals. Having been financially independent for some time, he could afford to realize his long-nurtured desire to design a monument to the unknown who had died during the construction of the St Gotthard tunnel, The Victims of Labour (VII). In the history of art, this magnificent high relief is an unparalleled emblem of the industrial age. The plaster original – a posthumous version in bronze was ordered by the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Rome while another copy was unveiled at the railway station of Airolo in 1932 – shows the miners consumed by fatigue as they carry away on a stretcher a dead co-worker, whose face is unmistakably that of the artist. This secular version of the Deposition, modelled with superlative technique, is the first ever monument dedicated to workers: a tribute to a class who previously had only had the honour of decorating, as underlings, the pedestals of monuments. This social realist model, which found its equivalent in the paintings of Gustave Courbet, was the main attraction at the first Swiss National Exposition in Zurich in 1883. Yet again Vela’s art became the means of presenting political issues – in this case those concerning the nascent workers’ movement – to a wide public.