Carrara, they frame a bicycle on the 1876 monument. Perpetrators, two juveniles

An episode of vandalism against a nineteenth-century monument in Carrara: the marble monument to Pellegrino Rossi (Carrara, 1787 - Rome, 1848), a work from 1876, to which a bicycle was added, was the victim. This was not an artistic performance, however, but simply a stupid act that occurred on the night between Friday and Saturday, when two 17-year-olds climbed the statue and jammed a bicycle on top of it. It took only a short time for the Carabinieri to trace the perpetrators, two regulars of Piazza Gramsci (the central square where the monument has stood since 1876). That’s not all: authorities also found a marble fragment, likely detached from the statue as the two climbed up to “install” the bicycle (later removed late yesterday morning by traffic police). Now the two minors face charges for defacing and damaging cultural property.

The portrait of Pellegrino Rossi (an economist and jurist who was minister of the interior and minister of finance of the Papal State in 1848, the year he was assassinated, in an episode that set off a chain of events from which originated the revolt during which the Roman Republic was proclaimed in 1849) was commissioned from Pietro Tenerani in 1854 by Duke Mario Massimo di Rignano, who wanted to replace the commemorative aedicule of the politician in the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso requested in 1849 by Pope Pius IX, to commemorate the assassination attempt Rossi had suffered the year before. The model was ready in 1854 but it took several years to translate it into marble, which probably dates from 1869. In contrast, the Carrara monument was erected posthumously, in 1876, and was sculpted by sculptor Scipione Jardella under the supervision of Fernando Pelliccia.

This is not the first time the Pellegrino Rossi monument has suffered damage. In recent years it had been repeatedly targeted by writers who covered its base with writing. Again, in 2006 the monument had been hammered by vandals who had blown off the heads of all the figures in the base reliefs. In 1978, the monument had even been the victim of a bomb attack, when a bomb had been planted near the statue and the explosion had caused it extensive damage.

Carrara, they frame a bicycle on the 1876 monument. Perpetrators, two juveniles

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