Wounded Achilles

Innocenzo Fraccaroli (1805-1882), in the field of sculpture, is an emblematic figure of 19th-century Verona and among the most representative of local art of this period. He was a highly gifted artist who tended to be conservative and fully identified with the teachings of the 19th-century academy within neoclassicism, but who, in this very work, also shows that he incorporates the research of metaphorical imagery related to the Italian Risorgimento. Conceived in plaster in 1883 and completed in marble in 1842, the "Wounded Achilles" is immediately acknowledged as the absolute masterpiece of the artist, considered from the very beginning as the ideal heir of Antonio Canova. Monumental in size, rather than in a victorious posture, Achilles is depicted at the moment when he is mortally wounded, when over heroism prevails the painful acceptance of his own demise.