Well, I haven’t seen these before. As photos they are fine. I’m just not liking the styles of sculpture. Where are they from, Gianluca, and who made them?
@Rob MacKillop Your observation that you do not like the style of the sculptures prompts me to ask myself: do I like these sculptures? I think I did not ask myself this question before, perhaps because I did not find it interesting. I find these sculptures extremely fascinating for a number of reasons: because they reflect the style of an artistic period, because of the plastic strength or, on the contrary, the stylisation of the forms, because of how the artist has creatively solved the proposed challenge, because they reflect the personality of the author. Pure aesthetic judgement I would put aside, the question for me is not whether I like them, but whether I find them interesting. Yes, I find them interesting.
The photos were taken in two Catholic cemeteries in Padua, Italy.
The first photograph shows a funerary sculpture by Leonardo Bistolfi, a sculptor who was known as the 'Poet of Death'. The sculpture is from 1930, but the style is still the symbolist style that Bistolfi embraced in the late 19th century and never abandoned. I like the dynamism of the realisation and also its cruelty: at the moment of his passing, the deceased resists the angel of death (here in decidedly female form) who, without paying him any attention, almost drags him by force into the afterlife.
The second photograph depicts a much more compassionate angel, sharing in the suffering of the dead young girl, gently inviting her to follow him in an upward ascent. The poor deceased girl was the daughter of an important doctor in the city, Alessandro Randi the founder of the open-air schools, schools where lessons were held outdoors so as to favour children's health. The sculpture, dated 1914, is by Giovanni Rizzo.
The third is a 1953 sculpture by Amleto Sartori, perhaps the most famous Paduan sculptor of the last century together with Luigi Strazzabosco. Here the style is very static, and to some extent abandons realism (especially in the angel's wings rendered with synthetic geometries). Sartori had also been a sculptor during the Fascist era, and this work is still somewhat influenced by that style, but in other of his works of the period or later, we find great interpretative freedom and expressive force.
The last sculpture is by a controversial author (Luigi Strazzabosco? Enrico Parnigotto?) and of uncertain date, but in any case to be dated to the Fascist era. Here, the simplification of forms is even more extreme; it does not represent reality, but an idea.
