Читать книгу The Museo Vincenzo Vela in Ligornetto - Marc-Joachim Wasmer - Страница 16

Much of 19th century sculpture is difficult to view. Apart from the works of leading exponents like Canova and Rodin, those of other sculptors – even the once famous – are stowed away in museum storerooms. The grandiose mausoleums in cemeteries are falling to pieces, while the sad monuments still standing in squares have become annoying obstacles to traffic, when they have not actually been moved to an out-of-the-way site or disposed of with the garbage.

Vincenzo Vela, Monument to Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Como Days, 1888–1889, plaster original.

Vincenzo Vela, The Surrender of the San Francesco Barracks, a relief on the base of the Monument to Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Como Days, 1889, plaster original.

Greater justice would have been done to this art, which was ousted by the avant-gardes, soon forgotten and long underestimated by the critics, if its original function were understood and it were seen in its proper context. It offers us a multifaceted view of an era that is considered to have laid the foundations for the liberal democracies of the West. Now, after all the postmodern art, we can once again appreciate these sculptures – often diminished as kitsch – which, with respect to form and content, ought to be rightly considered representative of early modern art.

From this perspective the Museo Vincenzo Vela at Ligornetto, a house museum of the highest order, can play an exemplary role in encouraging an unprejudiced approach to 19th century art and in enabling the public to see the artist’s aesthetic ideals in relation to the aims of the sculpture of that period. The plaster originals, the small terracotta mod els, the drawings, the designs, and the photographs in the Museum’s collection permit the visitor to genuinely engage in Vincenzo Vela’s artistic concerns, far better than the monuments, damaged by exhaust fumes and pigeon excrement, scattered through northern Italy and Ticino.