CHAPTER XX.
ALLEGORIES IN ART—THE MONGA MONUMENT AT VERONA—OF MY LATE DAUGHTER LUISINA—HER DEATH—HOW I WAS ROBBED—MONSIGNORE ARCHBISHOP LIMBERTI'S CHARITABLE PROJECT—ONE OF MY COLLEAGUES—NICOLÔ PUCCINI AND THE STATUE OF CARDINAL FORTEGUERRI—CESARE SIGHINOLFI—CARDINAL CORSI, ARCHBISHOP OF PISA.
I should now feel inclined to speak at length of the troubles, the thoughts, and of the opposition that I had to encounter during eight years, the grimaces and the miserable enmities of fickle, unstable friends and ungenerous enemies; but I must keep silent, as I have been thus far on all such matters, because my intentions and my works being known to all, others may judge them. Then I also remember a wise warning that was given me when I was quite little, which is never to satisfy any desire or impulse to give vent to personal resentment, and I have always found myself the better for it. In such cases, silence has two advantages,—that of leaving one's own soul at peace, and of not satisfying those who would take pleasure in hearing us complain.
Only on one thing I will not be silent, because this does not concern me, but is a principle in art. I was reproved for having used allegorical figures in Cavour's monument, it being asserted that as the subject was entirely a modern one, and could not bear allegory, it was inopportune and improper. To which I answered, that when the subject permitted, it was well not to think even of allegories. If they had said to me, "A memorial of Count Cavour is wanted, make us a statue," nothing would have been easier. A portrait-statue dressed in the clothes he wore, one or two bas-reliefs on the base, and a brief inscription, would have been enough; and, I repeat, nothing would have been easier. It was not this, however, that the commission required for Cavour's monument. The commission desired that the whole of his character and intentions, the tenacity of his will, the greatness of his propositions, and the benefits obtained therefrom, should be portrayed. Now, how to explain this with real historical figures, or, as they say, in living art? As if a complex idea expressed by one or more figures, as is the case with allegory, is dead art! Oh, do me the famous pleasure, you irritating æsthetics, to go and prattle to babes! But don't speak to them of Phidias, Zeuxis, Alcamenes, and others, of that dead art that is now more alive than it ever was; nor of Giotto, nor of Giovanni and Andrea Pisani, nor of Raphael, nor of Michael Angelo, and many more, for they might find you out in your error. I repeat, this does not concern me or my work in the least, but it bears on a principle, and is a question that has been many times ventilated and resolved by the best thinkers in the way of argument, and by artists, who were not blockheads, in their works.
HISTORICAL FIGURES AND ALLEGORIES.
From the noble Signora Augusta Albertini of Verona, through my friend Aleardo Aleardi, I had an order for a monument to her family, an extremely painful subject. The Signora Albertini had lost, one by one, all her family—father, mother, brothers, sisters, all—and she had alone survived; alone, but with the bitterly sweet memory of those she had loved so much, and the desire to erect a monument to them. Some time before, she had given the commission to a young Veronese sculptor of great promise, Torquato della Torre, and they tell me that he had already made a sketch; but shortly after, the young sculptor died, and after a long time had gone by I undertook to make this monument. Here is the description of it. On a quadrangular conical base there is placed a group consisting of the Angel of Death seated, and prostrated at his feet the only survivor of the family, waiting, as it were, after the havoc made by that angel in her family, for her turn to fall a victim. The angel, seated on a fragment of an antique frieze, to denote that he is superior to time and the pomps of humanity, is crowned with cypress, and has a pained expression, as if he deplored the office that Divine Justice had ordered him to fulfil; the exterminating sword is still in his hand, but the point is lowered. On the base is a bas-relief representing the dead members of that family; and as they died at brief intervals the one from the other, as if Death had blown them down with her breath as the wind overthrows the trees in the country, so they are laid out, shoulder to shoulder, by each other. A little angel hovers in the air near them with hands clasped in prayer, and in the background, on the horizon line, one perceives Verona. The bas-relief is in bronze, and its colours add seriousness and sadness to the scene. On the sides, and again in bronze, are sculptured two wreaths of cypress, so that this first base on the plinth seems as if it were entirely made of bronze; the upper part, on which the inscription is engraved and the group stands, is in granite. This monument is at the end of the first nave on the right in the cemetery at Verona.
MONUMENT TO THE FAMILY ALBERTINI.
I said in the beginning of these memoirs, that I wrote not only for young artists desirous of knowing something of my life, my works, and the principles that have been my guide in art and my intercourse with my fellow-beings, but also to leave to my family a remembrance of my feeling and affection for them. And now that it behoves me to speak of one of our greatest sorrows—that is, of the loss of my most beloved daughter Luisina—I know that I am doing what my dear ones desire, however sad it may be; therefore I warn those not caring for this theme to pass on.