Henry Moore's Warrior with Shield arrives forever on the Terrace of Saturn in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio

More than fifty years have passed since Henry Moore ’s (Castleford, 1898 - Perry Green, 1986) exhibition at Forte di Belvedere. Now, his sculpture Warrior with Shield, owned by the British Institute of Florence, finds a permanent home on the Terrace of Saturn in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio, thanks to the financial support of the Ministry of Tourism’s UNESCO Sites and Creative Cities Fund and the collaboration between the institutions involved, the heirs, and a painstaking restoration by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence. In recent decades it could be admired in the first courtyard of Santa Croce, where it remained until a few years ago.

Henry Moore’s Warrior with Shield is meant to evoke the mutilated figure of a young fighter who, in his motionless and precarious pride, invites to resist in the face of the battles of existence and History, always turning his gaze toward distant horizons. One recognizes in this sculpture the main source of inspiration for the artist: Michelangelo Buonarroti, but the recourse not only to the unfinished but also to the concept of the fragment is no less evident, as Moore’s Warrior with Shield is shown as a warrior without time or geographical belonging.

After the major exhibition organized at the Forte di Belvedere in 1972, the artist decided to donate a work to the city of Florence: the bronze sculpture Warrior with Shield, first made in 1953-54 and then unveiled precisely on the occasion of the famous Florentine retrospective. The work should have been placed in the Loggia di Saturno in the Palazzo Vecchio, but due to a series of vicissitudes it never reached there. Moore demanded its return, and the Warrior returned to England. Only in the 1980s, thanks to a resumption of discussions with Moore’s heirs and the interest of the British Institute of Florence, to which the work was donated at the behest of the artist’s family, did the bronze finally return to Florence.

In the early 1970s, while Moore was deciding to donate the Warrior with Shield to Florence, the city’s then mayor Luciano Bausi was making efforts to acquire a second work by the artist, namely Figura distesa(Reclining Figure), at the time kept in Berlin, the cost of which amounted to £35,000. The Warrior would thus have been added to that acquisition, and the city would have welcomed as many as two of the artist’s works into the territory, in memory of his relationship with Florence, which began in his youth when he first arrived in the Tuscan city. However, it was not possible to raise the necessary sum to bring the Figura distesa to Florence, and in the end the plan to acquire this second work failed. Meanwhile, in 1974, Warrior with Shield returned to the city. Set-up difficulties, however, delayed its placement in the Terrace of Saturn, and the sculpture was temporarily placed in the third courtyard of the Palazzo, however, jeopardizing the work’s metal patina, which had been intended for indoor display.

Ten years later, in 1984, Henry Moore received a photograph taken by David Finn showing the sculpture “abandoned” in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio. The artist also learned of the epithet “monument to the stump,” with which Florentines gleefully mocked it, and decided to demand its return. The City, which had meanwhile lost all rights to it, was forced to send it back to England. The affair caused quite a stir, finding significant coverage in the press of the time, including internationally, and the new mayor, Massimo Bogianckino, worked to have the sculpture returned to Florence. In the aftermath of Moore’s death, in August 1986, Maria Luigia Guaita and the then British Consul, urged by the City Council, wrote heartfelt letters to her daughter Mary Moore and widow Irina in which they also appealed to the memory of the 1972 Florentine exhibition. Eventually, Irina Moore decided to donate the Warrior to the British Institute of Florence, and the work was able to return to the city for which it was intended. Following the agreement between the Florentine city administration and the British Institute itself, a formula of long-term loan for use was reached, and it was decided to place the bronze in the first cloister of the monumental complex of Santa Croce, near the “urns of the forts,” where it remained until 2021.

On the occasion of one of the projects titled Relocated curated by Sergio Risaliti, that year the work was temporarily exhibited in the Palazzo Vecchio, in the Hall of Leo X. At the end of this exhibition, the work underwent a complex restoration carried out at the Bronzes and Ancient Weapons Sector of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, under the coordination of the Contemporary Art Service.

Today the sculpture finally returns to the place where the artist had imagined it: the corner loggia overlooking Via dei Leoni and the Loggia del Grano. The installation will be accompanied by a publication aimed at presenting and learning more about the restoration work just completed by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure.

Statements

“Moore’s mutilated warrior finally returns to Palazzo Vecchio, in its author’s favorite location, and seems to admonish us in the face of new contemporary wars,” said Mayor Dario Nardella. “Fifty years after the retrospective that the city dedicated to the great British artist at Forte di Belvedere, Moore continues to surprise us, and we continue to pay homage to him and find new ways to show his works. Now we welcome his warrior into the civic, historical and artistic heart of the city, a choice that will allow us to rediscover a bond with the sculptor that has never been dormant and that is part of the continuous search for experimentation and conjunction between the ancient and the contemporary that the city has been successfully pursuing for several years.”

"The arrival of Henry Moore’s Warrior with Shield in the Terrace of Saturn is an extraordinary event," said Deputy Mayor and Councillor for Culture Alessia Bettini, "whichseals the long and fascinating artistic bond between the work and the city of Florence, bringing to fruition the wish of the British artist. A journey marked by vicissitudes and repositioning, which adds further depth and meaning to the story of the work, now finally at ’home’. ’ A symbol of strength and resilience that will be here not only to testify to the greatness of an undisputed master who profoundly influenced modern sculpture, but also to represent the artist’s constant dialogue with the history of Florence and its masterpieces, in an exciting fusion of art, history and landscape with an eye toward the horizon and the future."

“The British Institute of Florence is delighted to renew the loan of our important Henry Moore sculpture to the City for display on the Terrace of Saturn,” said Simon Gammell, director of the British Institute of Florence. “This is another important symbol of the enduring special friendship between the city of Florence and its many British residents and visitors, including Henry Moore, one of our greatest artists, who loved this place.”

"Henry Moore is among UNESCO’s most valued artists; in fact, he was one of the few sculptors selected by UNESCO’s Committee on Architecture and Works of Art, in collaboration with the Committee of Artistic Advisors, for the artistic decoration of the permanent headquarters in Paris, which opened in 1958. In this context, UNESCO commissioned Henry Moore to create a work to be placed in the center of the square in front of the new building, the Silhouette at Rest, a sculpture on which Moore worked in Tuscany for almost a year and which was then transported to Paris," said Carlo Francini, Head of the Florence World Heritage and UNESCO Relations Office.

“A great satisfaction to have contributed as MUS.E to the realization of this project that concludes a scientific and exhibition itinerary that began a few years ago with the great exhibition of drawings at the Museo Novecento,” added MUS.E President Matteo Spanò. "At last we can admire the Warrior with Shield in that Terrace of Saturn imagined by Moore as the ideal place to exhibit his sculpture. Exhibition projects such as this, realized in several stages and with such a conclusion, constitute one of the best results to aim for. Indeed, it is not always possible to see works that have been the object of admiration only for a brief period, on the occasion of important exhibitions, remain in Florence: it has already happened with Francesco Vezzoli’s Lion, now it is repeated with Henry Moore’s Warrior. A teamwork that has worked excellently over these ten years, leading to important results. I thank the administration, all the staff of the Museo Novecento and MUS.E, the curator and the institutions that have shared this initiative."

“It has been a long journey that of Henry Moore that began in 1970,” said Sergio Risaliti, director of the Museo Novecento. “His appearance at Forte Belvedere radically changed the relationship between the Florentine cultural world and contemporary modern art. Henry Moore’s sculpture was a ’sweet shock’ because it brought down a lot of resistance and perplexity with its absolutely avant-garde yet classical, I would say even neo-humanistic language. In addition, to the shrewd, it made the strong connection of twentieth-century art with the archaic and primordial world clear. Finally, its refined forms are not empty of meaning because they always tend to represent the mystery of nature and the dramatic grandeur of history and human existence. We finally succeeded in fulfilling Moore’s dream thanks to the perfect collaboration among many institutions. We are still grateful to Mary Moore for approving this itinerary, to our friends at the British Institute of Florence, to Sebastiano Barassi of the Henry Moore Foundation, and a heartfelt thanks to the entire team at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure who conducted a perfect restoration. I am personally grateful to Mayor Nardella who has supported us so far, to all the offices of the municipality, to the staff of the Museo Novecento and to MUS.E. This is an achievement at the end of a decade of cultural challenges that have also had in Henry Moore a point of reference. It is not an end, but only the beginning.”

“The Opera di Santa Croce was naturally pleased to have the opportunity to host the Warrior, helping to overcome a critical phase,” added Cristina Acidini, president of the Opera di Santa Croce. “Now we are very happy that it will be placed on the Terrace of Saturn, as was Moore’s wish.”

"Moore was a staunch pacifist, and the image of this Warrior at once fragile and monumental seems even stronger and more evocative in this moment so marked by conflict, which reinforces the sense of a placement in a place so rich in civic values as Palazzo Vecchio," commented Emanuela Daffra, Superintendent of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure. “For the Opificio, which had already had the opportunity to work on other works by this 20th-century master, it was a precious moment of research: we are therefore particularly pleased to have contributed to this path.”

"The new wounds of the Warriorthat restorers Stefania Agnoletti, Maria Baruffetti, and Merj Nesi had to treat were mainly due to a combination of the sculpture’s casting technique (a microporous metal and the relevant presence of residues of the casting earths and iron armor) and its stay for several years in an outdoor environment, which had caused the chromatic alteration of the patina - the color of the bronze - and the emergence of whitish efflorescence," concluded Renata Pintus, director of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure’s Contemporary Art Service. “The ferrous materials and soils were removed from the interior and the surface was subjected to careful cleaning: considering a substantial readiness of the sculpture to change over time the appearance of the work and the transfer of the Warrior to a semi-confined environment, we limited ourselves to dampening certain chromatic inhomogeneities corresponding to the areas of welding or resulting from the general turning toward green of the patination, then applying a protection consisting of a mixture of waxes.”

Pictured: the Henry’s Warrior with Shield in the Terrace of Saturn. Photo by Carlo Bressan

Henry Moore's Warrior with Shield arrives forever on the Terrace of Saturn in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio

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