Resurgent Christ – The Monument to Victory in Bolzano

This is the full-scale cast of the Resurgent Christ bronze for the Monument to Victory of Bolzano, erected in memory of the fallen soldiers of the First World War based on designs by architect Marcello Piacentini with works of several artists as Antonio Wildt, Arturo Dazzi and Pietro Canonica. Andreotti also realized a bronze bas-relief representing a winged Victory guiding a soldier placed on the rear of the monument. “I will make an altar with The Resurgent on top of it, a statue high 2 meters 60 from the belt up and a battlefield on the back and, around it, four statues over 3 meters high, the Cardinal Virtues, as four columns”, the artist wrote Aldo Carpi on August 12, 1926. In fact Andreotti had thought of a real “altar flanked by four columns representing the four Virtues. In front, Christ leaving the sepulchre, in the back a great relief representing the battlefield. In order to come to this solution, I went through various studies - that I’m wrong not to have recorded, but many of the drawings still remain -”as he wrote to Piacentini in 1926. Documentation of the abovementioned solution are the plasters that go from the study-model of Christ to the models for the winged Victory, from the molds of the four Virtues to the seven models for them. Andreotti passionately rejected the strong reference to the Resurrection of Piero della Francesca in Sansepolcro that had been observed: “What has my Christ got to do with the one by Piero della Francesca? What? Where do these two resemble? Wasn’t the Redeemer always made like this, even before Piero?”, he wrote in a letter to Papini, And now, in its actual position, the value of the sculpture is undermined, for it is placed too close against the niche, thus almost reducing it to a bas-relief. The whole group of virtues was modified according to Piacentini’s will, at first reduced to two statues, diminished by two thirds of their height (which should have been three meters tall) and then, later, completely left out of the whole ensemble to make way for three heads by A. Wildt.

Floor:
Room: Entrance
Year: 1926-28
Author: Libero Andreotti