Giacomo Manzù

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in the late 1980s

Manzù. L’Uomo e l’Artista (exh. cat.), Palazzo Venezia, Rome, 2002-03, no. 155, illustration of the gilt-wood version on the cover & p. 223

Giacomo Manzù was a self-taught Italian sculptor who - unexposed to contemporary art - was captivated by the classical sculpture that he read about in books. He was drawn to the concept of ‘form’, enthralled by shape rather than representation. The present sculpture, Cardinale, evokes the archaic Kouroi sculptures of Ancient Greece: stone statues of men, often used as grave-markers, uniform, anonymous in identity and strong in their stillness. The anonymity and uniformity of the Kouroi was essential to their function as homage to the deceased, who were thus all immortalised at a shared moment of youth, strength and beauty.

The dramatic pyramidal form of the Cardinal, tapering ever-upwards in a sound conical shape is as resilient and dramatic an image as an ancient Kouros. However, where the Kouroi are uncovered, their bodies idealised and unveiled, the cardinal is defined by the drapery that envelops him. All that alludes to the human beneath the material is an expressionless face and a hand emerging from between the folding textures. Manzù’s relationship with Christianity was a fragile one: at certain points renouncing his faith altogether, he nevertheless remained a close friend of Pope John XXIII. Is the drapery a symbol of the robustness of the Cardinal’s faith, or a symbol of the armour they use to distance and dissociate themselves from the real world.

Preoccupied by this concept, Manzù created more than 300 versions of the Cardinal, running from 1938 to his death in 1991. Examples can be found in the permanent collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and Tate Modern, London. It is without doubt the most iconic and celebrated theme of Manzù’s entire œuvre.