Vincenzo Gemito

family of Vincenzo Gemito;
by descent to the artist's daughter, Giuseppina Gemito;
private collection, Italy

E. Somaré and A. Schettini, Gemito, 1944, pp. 201 and 213, fig. 53

Overall the condition of the bronze is very good with some minor wear and dirt to the surface consistent with age with some particular dirt in the crevices. There is some minor rubbing to the high points, including at the nose.
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The subject of Alexander the Great preoccupied Vincenzo Gemito for a decade. During this period he returned to the legendary conqueror time and again, producing some of his most iconic works. The series began with a pencil drawing made in 1912, shortly after the sculptor emerged from the twenty years of seclusion which followed a mental breakdown. The drawing was inspired by a small bronze of Alexander the Macedonian in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. The Mask of Alexander was created around 1920 alongside profiles of the hero in high and low relief. These works were the product of ten years' focus on the subject. In that time Gemito had sought out fourteen different antique portraits of Alexander to study. He famously concluded that ‘When I saw Alexander and found that he resembled what I had created I realised that if an artist is ignorant of the past he can never produce a masterpiece.’

The Mask of Alexander differs from the two reliefs in the style of the modelling. Both the high relief bust (terracotta in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna inv. 5043) and the low relief medallion are characterised by a delineation of form and a jewel-like level of detail. The Mask, in contrast, preserves the immediacy of the artist’s conception as he worked the clay.

Unusually, the mask includes the curious iconography of Alexander’s horns: an emblem of the emperor which originates from his conquest of Egypt and his association with the Ram god Ammon. As Mantura notes, Gemito found a source for the imagery in a small Pompeiian bust of a satyr in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale (inv. 5306), whose horns likewise emerge from locks of hair.

The present bronze is the first cast of the model and was preserved in the artist’s collection and later by his heirs. At one time it was owned by the artist’s daughter Giuseppina who recalled her father’s obsession with Alexander in an interview published by Corriere della Sera on 1^st September 1938. She told the journalist, Raffaele Carrieri, that she ‘grew up with Alexander’ and claimed that ‘Papa was closer to Alexander than to me, his own daughter.’ A wax version of the Mask with slight variations was acquired by the Galleria d’Arte Moderna from Giuseppina in 1938 (inv. 1038). Another bronze cast is in the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples and a further cast, formerly in the Minozzi collection, was included in the 2009 exhibition of Gemito’s works at the Villa Pignatelli, Naples.

RELATED LITERATURE
M. Pagano, Gemito, exh. cat. Museo Diego Aragona Pignatelli Cortes, Naples, 2009, pp. 210-17, nos. 80-86; B. Mantura, Temi di Vincenzo Gemito, Rome, 1989, pp. 127-128