European Sculpture & Works of Art: The Nineteenth Century

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Lot 85
  • 85

Vincenzo Vela Italian, 1820-1891

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Description

  • Vincenzo Vela
  • The Last Days of Napoleon
  • entitled to the front: NAPOLEON
  • bronze, mid-brown patina, on a veined purple marble base

Catalogue Note

Vela was one of the great proponents of Realism in sculpture and the founder of the verismo movement in Italy. His Last Days of Napoleon is a prime example of that combination of melodrama with acute attention to detail. At the Paris Salon of 1867, Vela's Napoleon was a sensation, although it elicited much debate as to whether it was too Realist or too Romantic. The critical dilemma, summarised by Wardropper, was to what extent the virtuosity of Vela's miming of reality overshadowed his artistic conception.

Vela chose to depict Napoleon as a chair-bound invalid, tracing the ruins of his former empire across a map of Europe. Nonetheless he has retained the youthful features and heroic bearing which gives the composition its monumentality and emotional tangibility.

RELATED LITERATURE
Chiseled With a Brush, p.36, no.1