The Sculptor's Chisel
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in all of his works. His work stands above the others of his time with his intellectual approach. Words alone cannot say enough about his work. The Angel of the Resurrection can be seen in the Staglieno Cemetery, is among his most famous works.
[/section] [section] [button text="READ MORE" style="underline" link="#bottom"] [/section] [section] [ux_gallery ids="787,790,786,789,780,781,782,784,785,779,778,777,776" style="none" lightbox_image_size="large" type="masonry" image_height="100%"] [/section] [section] [scroll_to title="#bottom" bullet="false"] [/section] [section]After his apprenticeship at Acqui Terme, at Casale Monferrato and then at Genoa as a cabinet-maker and carver, he attended the sculpture courses at the Ligustica Academy of Fine Arts in Genoa.
In 1865 he won a competition that allowed him to move to Rome: his stay in the capital allowed him to better understand the events of contemporary sculpture, freeing himself from the classicist residues. He then began to look with interest at the synthetic realism of Vincenzo Vela. His most famous works are witnessed: Columbus youth of 1870 and Jenner who inoculates the anti-child vaccine to his son in 1873 (presented at the Vienna International Exposition in the same year, wins the gold medal, the marble version is exposed to Gallery of Modern Art of Genoa), which assured him international fame and a huge success followed by countless commissions.
He made celebratory sculptures, such as the equestrian monument to Vittorio Emanuele II of Bologna (1880) or the one dedicated to Vincenzo Bellini of Catania (1883); he dealt with the social theme of work in the Fabbro (1875) and in the Tessitore (created in 1878 following the commission of Alessandro Rossi, an industrialist of Lanerossi who, dedicating it to his workers, placed it in the courtyard of the factory in Schio).
In the following years there will be numerous tasks to carry out funeral monuments in the main cemeteries in Italy and abroad: Genoa, Turin, Milan, Ferrara, Rome, Madrid, Buenos Aires to name but a few; they are the symbol of the affluent rich bourgeoisie that aspires to show its importance through grandiose monuments, executed by the greatest sculptors of the time.
Thus was born the tomb of the Genoese banker Francesco Oneto (characterized by the representation of the first female, meditative and sensual angel, now turned towards symbolism, a real "breaking point" in the art history of the second half of the nineteenth century), that to Carlo Sada, architect of the Savoy, the monument dedicated to the burial of General Giacomo Medici del Vascello and others. In the Staglieno Cemetery in Genoa, a true "open-air museum", some of its most beautiful sculptures are preserved.
There is no shortage of works of a religious nature, such as the Madonna and Child - dated 1889 - whose translation in marble and bronze is placed in the parish church of Bistagno and the Crucifix of 1886 (the marble version is preserved in the entrance chapel of the Cimitero di Buenos Aires).
The marble version of Idealità e materialismo, of 1908, is exhibited in the atrium of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, the plaster model in its final dimensions, is kept in Bistagno. They are distinguished by a simple and direct realism, the bust dedicated to Marco Minghetti and the full-length statue of Senator Giuseppe Saracco, whose bronze version is found in the gardens of the homonymous Lyceum Acquese.
It was Saracco himself who proposed and obtained his nomination as senator of the Kingdom: Monteverde will be the first sculptor to hold this position.
In 1902, in the seat of the Senate at Palazzo Madama, the Rotonda Monteverde was inaugurated with the portrait busts of Leopardi, Gioberti and Carducci; in the same year is the monument to Alessandro Rossi in Schio. In 1910 he completed the gigantic golden bronze allegorical group, Il pensiero, located at the foot of the Altare della Patria in Rome.
On 3 October 1917 Monteverde died in Rome, in the building that he had designed in Piazza Indipendenza, home of the study and home. His death passed almost unnoticed, due to the tragic war period, close to the days of Caporetto.
"The discoverer of an oasis unknown in the desert of academic art". As for all the sculptors of the time, his art is divided between the funerary monument and the memorial, but he also made busts of lively signification. Among the most important public monuments of the Master are to remember the Mazzini in Buenos Aires, the Bellini of Catania, the colossal statue of the pianist Thalberg in the royal villa of Naples, the Vittorio Emanuele II of Bologna. But his masterpiece is the Jenner, inspired in 1869 by a passage by Smiles, made in 1873 and awarded with the medal of honor at the exhibition in Vienna in that year (the original marble, in the White Palace of Genoa, the bronze replica, in the Gallery National Museum of Modern Art in Rome). Awarded with high and numerous honors, member of the most important academies, M. was nominated senator in 1889.