Ernesto Bazzaro Italian, 1859-1937

Another cast of this self-portrait is in the Gilgore Collection, Chicago, exhibited Art Institute, Chiseled with a Brush, 1994, cat. no.29, p. 112-115.

Bazzaro was one of the group of Italian sculptors hugely influenced by the stile liberta of Giuseppe Grandi and his circle known as the Scapigliatura.  However, his work also exhibited a number of other contradictory styles ranging from sentimental genre to neo-classical, perhaps because he was bound by his patrons.

He trained at the Brera Academy under Ambrogio Borghi; his brother was the painter Leonardo Bazzaro.  He produced a number of large scale pieces including a monument to Garibaldi in Monza (1886) and a tomb to Romolo Squadrelli in Milan (1911).  He also worked with various architects producing figurative and sculptural decoration for the façades of many Milanese buildings.

In complete contrast Bazzaro made a number of small bronzes in large editions as a commercial venture, one of the best known being In the Caravan, also known as Flight into Egypt, dated 1892.

Bazzaro produced two self-portraits.  This is the later of the two, dated approximately four years after the first.  Both are good examples of Bazzaro's desire to express himself in the contemporary impressionistic and freely modelled manner of Medardo Rosso, Troubetskoy,  Leonardo Bistolfi and Pina.