The Museo Vincenzo Vela in Ligornetto. Marc-Joachim Wasmer

      Vincenzo Vela, The Flag-Bearer: Monument to the Sardinian Army, 1857–1859, plaster original.

      Vincenzo Vela, Italy Grateful to France, A Gift from Milanese Ladies to the Empress Eugénie, 1861–1862, plaster original.

       A conspiracy?

      However, success did not enable him to understand that the political climate in his adopted country had changed: Vela’s being the favourite in the 1863 competition in Turin to execute a Monument to Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour (IV) gave rise to a murky conspiracy, which ended with the sculptor’s abruptly abandoning the chair at the Academy. Being Swiss, after the unification of Italy he was made a foreigner who had to compete with local artists. In 1867, at the age of forty-seven, he bitterly withdrew to the place he had grown up in, where he had built a summer residence with a view to its becoming a museum for his work. However, he continued to be unanimously considered the founder of Italian verism: his admirers called him the ‘Cavour of art‘ (Carlo Pisani, 1870) and the ‘Ligornetto Phidias‘. During the last thirty years of his life he continued to work apace, accepting commissions for portraits and funerary monuments, and not unfrequently for representations of popular themes. Even when elderly, he could not resist projects of vast scope.

       Aborted commissions

      In 1873, Charles II, Duke of Brunswick, died in exile in Geneva. As an eminent Swiss sculptor, Vela was commissioned by the duke’s executors to create a Neo-Gothic mausoleum and, together with his friend, the Ticino architect Antonio Croci, he designed a model on the lines of the Scaliger Tombs in Verona (IV). Work on the two life-size statues in plaster and the monumental Equestrian Statue (I) were well underway when the two lawyers who had commissioned the piece requested some unwarranted changes, which turned out to be a mere pretext. Once again, Vela was the victim of shady machinations and, feeling that his creative freedom had been curbed, he rescinded the contract. The work, whose imposing scale would have made it a crowning achievement of his career, was completed in a relatively short time by other sculptors supervised by the architect Jean Franel and was unveiled on the Quai du Mont-Blanc in Geneva in 1879.

      Unknown, Vincenzo Vela and His Coworkers (Turin), 1855–1860 (1938), salt print based on the original photography.

      Vincenzo Vela, Bozzetto of the Monument to Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour (first version), 1863, terracotta and patinated plaster.

      Vincenzo Vela, The Victims of Labour, 1882, plaster original.

       The Victims of Labour

      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.

       Late works and legacy

      In 1888–1889 Vela executed his last public work: the Monument to Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Como Days Uprising of March 1848 (I), commissioned by the city of Como. This nearly four metres high full-length statue is certainly one of the most imposing portraits of the general (1807–1882). The intense figure is filled with pent-up energy. Dressed in a poncho and holding an unsheathed sword in his right hand, Garibaldi has a daunting, almost ferocious look. His expression and pose reflect not only the inner fire of a freedom fighter, but also his disappointment over the suspect political developments in a recently unified Italy.

      Bronze was the most suitable material for representing so formidable a figure. Vela had already developed an expressiveness in modelling to suit the material, as can be seen in Funerary Monument to Maria Demartini Scala (1879–1882, VI) and Monument to Agostino Bertani (1887, VII) in Milan, drawing on the experience gained in his reliefs. The figure of Garibaldi has a sketchy quality, to the extent of directly referencing the innovations of the young Medardo Rosso and the Italian Impressionists, namely the Scapigliati and Macchiaioli.

       Today

      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