Giovannino Guareschi

Presented in 1954 in the magazine "La Notte", the artwork portrays Giovannino Guareschi, called the "Prince" by his friend Luigi Froni, the sculptor. The face had been published as an editorial content of the article entitled "From the alarm clock to the silence", in which the journalist described his own past year in the Parma prison, where he had been imprisoned following charges for insult of the press. Guareschi himself dedicates two stories about this work: one, released in 1954, with the title "The bronze face", and one in 1960, with the title "The face of Milan". He published the stories on the paper called "Candido": the writer describes, through irony and wit, the "double register of Froni's portraiture that adheres to the characters of the subject, revealing its most secret nature". In "The bronze face", Guareschi jokingly narrates how his wife, seeing Froni's mask hanging, began to rant: "No, I didn't marry you! I married the one over the fireplace ! For years now I had felt that I was the victim of a colossal misunderstanding, for years I had felt that the truth was not what I was accustomed to consider as truth. Giovannino, here is your true face on the fireplace. What I thought was a smile is in reality a bitter, contemptuous, cynical, ferocious, cruel grimace! ".