The Vittoriano dedicates an exhibition to Giuseppe Mazzini. From the U.S. also Silvestro Lega's masterpiece

Until September 8, 2024, the Vittoriano’s Sala Zanardelli is hosting the exhibition The Last Portrait: Mazzini and Lega, Parallel Histories of the Risorgimento, curated by Edith Gabrielli, director of VIVE - Vittoriano and Palazzo Venezia, with the historical advice of Giuseppe Monsagrati; the exhibition is sponsored by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, is promoted and organized by the Ministry of Culture and VIVE, in collaboration with the General Directorate of Museums and in agreement with the Institute for the History of the Italian Risorgimento.

The centerpiece of the exhibition project is Silvestro Lega ’s painting Gli ultimi momenti di Giuseppe Mazzini, preserved in the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design in Providence (USA), in which Mazzini is portrayed a few hours before his death in all his fragile and composed humanity. Silvestro Lega, a fervent Mazzinian and follower of republican ideals, conceived the work on March 12, 1872, in Pisa, in the home of Pellegrino Rosselli and his wife Janeth Nathan, directly in the presence of the body of Giuseppe Mazzini, who had died there two days earlier under the pseudonym of George Brown, restoring an image of him that is completely unprecedented and far removed from the official image of the stern and imperturbable hero that Mazzini himself had helped to create. Lega’s masterpiece demonstrates the ability of painting to compete with other forms of preserving the public memory of the greats of the Risorgimento, primarily lithography and photography.

Organized on two floors, the exhibition is divided into four sections, to which is added an immersive room that, through digital technology, allows visitors to experience what they have already observed in the sections. Dedicated to the figure of Giuseppe Mazzini, the exhibition itinerary on the second floor opens with an important and recent acquisition by the VIVE Institute - Vittoriano and Palazzo Venezia: the Bust of Giuseppe Mazzini executed by Pavia sculptor Giovanni Spertini in 1878, the same year in which, upon the death of Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of Italy, the state conceived the idea of creating a monument in his memory, the Vittoriano in fact. Spertini’s work, which depicts Mazzini with the sash bearing one of his most famous mottos, God and the People, was purchased by VIVE on the London market and will enrich the tour of the Vittoriano’s history and myth, now underway.

The second section on the second floor, in particular, delves into one of the exhibition’s key themes: the role Mazzini attributed to traditional and mass communication, as well as to the elaboration and dissemination of his own public image; from correspondence to the press-including the famous newspaper he himself created, La Giovine Italia-to the masters he considered precursors of national painting, such as Francesco Hayez, Giovanni Migliara and Massimo D’Azeglio. With this in mind, the Genoese thinker exercised tight control over his own image through the tools of plaster, marble and bronze replicas, lithography and photography, aware of their propagandistic value. On the second floor, the exhibition develops around the profile of Silvestro Lega and the central role played by The Last Moments of Giuseppe Mazzini, not only within the latter’s iconographic imagery but also in Lega’s own creative journey. Lega started from his language, rooted in the Macchiaioli movement, and keeping in mind some novelties of the international art scene (from Édouard Manet to Edgar Degas), he matured an original and highly personal stylistic figure: the result was an unprecedented image of Mazzini, far removed from the official iconography proposed by his followers.

The exhibition has over sixty objects, including sculptures, paintings, engravings, photographs, manuscripts, unpublished documents and Mazzini memorabilia. Among the latter are the spectacles, sword, and shawl, which formerly belonged to Carlo Cattaneo. Overall, these objects are intended to give the public a faithful and compelling historical context, enabling them to better understand Mazzini, Lega and together the entire Risorgimento process.

At the conclusion of the exhibition, the immersive space allows the public to reflect on the contents of the exhibition in order to relive and emotionally assimilate them, to literally enter the work of art so as to appreciate its details, as well as to verify through the monuments how much today the memory of Giuseppe Mazzini is alive and relevant in our country and the world.

The exhibition benefits from the agreement with a number of important institutions that preserve the memory of Giuseppe Mazzini and Silvestro Lega, such as the Library of Modern and Contemporary History in Rome, the Domus Mazziniana in Pisa, the Istituto Mazziniano-Museo del Risorgimento in Genoa, the Museo del Risorgimento in Milan, the Museo del Risorgimento in Pavia, the Municipality of Modigliana, the Diocese of Faenza-Modigliana and the Matteucci Institute in Viareggio.

The exhibition event also offers an educational program aimed at all age groups: from guided tours dedicated to adults to workshops for children and families aimed at deepening their knowledge of the figure of Giuseppe Mazzini and the period of the Risorgimento, on the other hand, Silvestro Lega and nineteenth-century painting.

“The Vittoriano, home of the Altar of the Fatherland, represents the most important monument that the Italian state has dedicated to the Risorgimento and therefore also to Giuseppe Mazzini,” said VIVE director Edith Gabrielli. “The legacy of Mazzini’s values can be traced in many parts of the complex, such as the bronze sculptural groups depicting The Thought and The Action. It is also always here, in the Vittoriano, that the Museo Centrale del Risorgimento and the Institute for the History of the Italian Risorgimento are located: one and the other hold relics and Mazzinian documents of great importance. The choice of our Institute by the Ministry of Culture for the organization of such a high-profile exhibition is quite natural and has triggered an extraordinary network of collaborations with as many as fifteen museum institutes and institutions, among the main custodians of the legacy of the two protagonists, Giuseppe Mazzini and Silvestro Lega. Lega knew Mazzini’s thinking from a young age: the artist became a follower of republican ideals and contributed to the cause on the battlefield and with his own art. Lega in conceiving and then painting this groundbreaking canvas traveled a difficult and lonely road, as after all any great artist does. In Italy, at first few understood it, while abroad it was immediately accepted. Only with time did it become an icon of Mazzini and our Risorgimento.”

“The Vittoriano, the House of the Italian Risorgimento, is the natural place to host the exhibition dedicated to Giuseppe Mazzini, who of that historic founding process of the Nation is the one who best embodied the values and personified the deeds,” commented Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano. "The scale of his commitment and his political stature transcended the boundaries of Italian history to make him a weighty exponent of Western thought, as evidenced by the fact that The Last Moments of Giuseppe Mazzini by Silvestro Lega, the iconic symbol of this exhibition, comes from the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design in Providence where it is kept in the United States. The Ministry of Culture has worked to obtain its loan and, until September 8, along with more than sixty works, it will be on display for the benefit of the public, who will thus be able to get reacquainted with this great figure of our Homeland."

For info: https://vive.cultura.gov.it/it/

Hours: Daily from 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Image: Silvestro Lega, The Last Moments of Giuseppe Mazzini (1873; oil on canvas; Providence, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design)

The Vittoriano dedicates an exhibition to Giuseppe Mazzini. From the U.S. also Silvestro Lega's masterpiece

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