Sculpture

This sculpture depicts Hebe, the daughter of Zeus and Hera, as she serves nectar to the gods. Its beauty embodies the canonical ideals that experimentalists sought to capture between the 18th and 19th centuries: her ethereal face, the fluid lines of the garments that outline and caress her body, and the graceful gesture of her arm holding the amphora are in harmony with the elegant motion of this young woman, who almost seems to float. The pure white plaster cast from 1798 is considered to be one of the most singular works of Venice-based artist Antonio Canova. It was the original model for the statue and was used to make the first 2 marble figures. These are now kept at the National Gallery in Berlin and the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The 2 other 1808 versions of Hebe (one in the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth House and the other at the Pinacoteca Comunale gallery in Forlì) are different mainly in their support structures, since the artificial cloud has been replaced with a simple tree trunk.  

This piece depicts a girl reading, captured within the intimacy of a peaceful domestic setting on an old-fashioned chair. The sculpture clearly evokes the model created by Francesco Hayez, taking the strongly accented naturalism of Vincenzo Vela's Morning Prayer (which this work seems to echo) to an extreme. This work represents one of the most significant moments in the Lombard figurative evolution of the 19th century, distancing itself from the academic style to develop a new language: the lexicon of a new generation of artists and of a sculptural school—the so-called Milan School, to which Pietro Magni was a key contributor. It was presented for the first time at the annual Brera Exhibition in 1856, along with the more ambitious and lauded piece, Socrates, and went mostly unnoticed as a result. The more progressive Milan-based critics came out against it, led by Rovani, harshly criticizing the passive reinterpretation of Hayez' model and its overly faithful recreation. However, it was met with surprising success 5 years later at the first National Exhibition of Florence in 1861. There, the artist presented a different version with an effigy of Garibaldi around the girl's neck and a poem dedicated to the hero written on the volume she is holding. The hugely successful, award-winning piece was purchased by the Ministry of Education, which sent it to Turin. It also asked the artist to create a number of replicas, one of which was donated to the Brera Academy, and another of which was sent to London in 1862, before finally joining the collection of the National Gallery of Washington after a series of handovers. Magni did his best to meet the extraordinary demand he received for commissions, based on the unexpected success of the work at exhibitions. It was displayed at a number of major events of this kind, including in Paris in 1867, Vienna in 1873, Santiago in Chile in 1875, and Philadelphia in 1876.

This sculpture was presented by Giuseppe Grandi at the Brera Exhibition in 1873, and takes its inspiration from the poem "Lara" by Lord Byron. The museum preserves the original plaster model of this marble statue, which stirred heated debate among critics when it was exhibited. It was admired by the academic Domenico Induno, but harshly criticized by Mongeri: "The first time I saw it, I felt as though I had been transported into one of those disasters of the early geological ages, in a boiling mixture of granite, metal, and gaseous substances." It was also criticized by Boito as a "strained effort. A grotesque sculpture." The well-known architect and writer Camillo Boito declared Grandi to be in clear opposition to the formal perfection of the Milan School and its "soft rasping and industrially smoothed marble." Likewise, he considered the young artist's technique to be artificial, "fiercely chiseled in appearance but weighty in substance and no less disingenuous." His sculptural style did not impress him, even though it resembled the pictorial language of Tranquillo Cremona: "We like Cremona. Grandi, we do not."

This compact bronze piece is a small-scale cast of one of the 6 large figures that comprise the monument to the Burghers of Calais. This task was entrusted to Auguste Rodin by the French city's council in 1884 and was erected in 1895. Jean d'Aire was one of the six Burghers of Calais, led by Eustache de Saint-Pierre who, in 1347, during the Hundred Years' War, offered English besiegers the keys to the city, as well as their own lives, in exchange for the safety of its citizens. Impressed by the patriotism of this gesture, the British ruler at the time, Edward III, spared their lives. This sculpture is far from the titanism and gigantism of Rodin's most recognizable works. However, it still demonstrates the artist's innovative and painstaking approach to his material, and his experimentation with the body. In this case, it gives the figure, captured with the keys to the city in his hands, an extreme, almost unnatural stiffness.

The Concierge was probably modeled in 1883, as reported by Rosso, or in 1884 at the very latest, as proposed by some 20th-century studies. The artist's muse was Sciora Orsola, the concierge of a building on Via Montebello in Milan, where he lived. Hidden away in her porter's lodge, the artist developed an intense fixation on her.  Rosso made at least 12 replicas of this subject. He considered this sculpture—a reinterpretation of the earlier "Sagrestano"—to be a turning point in his artistry, defining his own unique point of view and capturing a fleeting impression. Made of a blend of very clear wax, this is the only artwork that the sculptor donated to the GAM in Milan, in 1922. The museum records report that the piece was replaced by Francesco Rosso at the end of 1952, as a result of it being "destroyed by significant damage." This may have been caused by it being displaced during the war. In fact, Francesco recovered the damaged work, restored it, and then placed it in the Medardo Rosso Museum in Barzio, but it has since been lost. In exchange for this waxwork, the bronze Ruffiana statue was donated to the Milan museum. This was crafted under his direction, as evidenced by a letter from Costantino Baroni to Francesco Rosso dated November 10, 1952, and by 2 acts of the Municipality of Milan, dated November 17, 1952 and January 1953.

"Ecce Puer" is the last original work crafted by Rosso, who, in the years that followed devoted himself to replicating and creating variants of the works he had molded up to that point. The plaster figure found in the GAM is the original model, of which there are at least 12 different versions. French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau visited his studio in 1907 and personally selected it for the Musée du Luxembourg, which was dedicated to living artists. Emile Mond, a wealthy industrialist, commissioned the sculptor to create a portrait of his son, Alfred, when the artist visited the wealthy family's London home in 1906. The legend goes that Rosso crafted the piece during a night of fevered work at the London residence, but some critics believe that the portrait was actually modeled at his studio in Batignolles after he returned to Paris, from a mix of sketches and memory. The work was exhibited at the Musée du Luxembourg until 1920, when it was removed and sent to the Musée des Écoles Étrangères (the label with the French reference number still appears on the front). After the artist died, his son Francesco got the plaster figure back in exchange for a bronze cast (today found at the Musée d'Orsay) and brought it to Barzio. It remained there until 1946 when, on the occasion of Medardo Rosso's first posthumous exhibition, it went to the painter Ezio Pastorio, who later sold it to the Municipality of Milan.