Mario Rutelli

Rutelli's war memorial at Aberystwyth

Mario Rutelli (Palermo, 4 April 1859 - 1941) was an Italian sculptor. Studying at the Academy of Fine Arts of Palermo and then in Rome under Giulio Monteverde, his masterwork is the "fontana delle Naiadi" in piazza dell'Esedra in Rome, which Benito Mussolini called "exaltation of eternal youth, the capital's first salute to art".

Many other of his works have disappeared in Italy and abroad, such as

• the monument to Anita Garibaldi on the Janiculum (a late work, but one as daring as his earlier works, such as "Gli Irosi"),
• one of the Victories on the Vittoriano in Rome
• the bronze Quadriga on the teatro Politeama at Palermo, with Apollo (the god of music) and Euterpe (the muse of lyric poetry) above it (in this work, the riders on the sides is a portrait of Rutelli's master Benedetto Civiletti)
• the lion at the base of the Garibaldi monument in the Garibaldi garden in Palermo
• the lion with a personification of lyric poetry above at the left of Palermo's Teatro Massimo (the lion at the right with Tragedy above it is by Rutelli's master Benedetto Civiletti)
• the "Lyric" and "Apotheosis of Vittorio Emanuele" at the Teatro Vittorio Emanuele
• the equestrian monument to Umberto I in Catania,
• the Fountain and commemorative monument at Agrigento
• the Monument to Nicola Spedalieri in piazza Sforza Cesarini (near the Chiesa Nuova) in Rome.

Among his surviving works are the statue of Goethe at Munich, the colossal 22-metre high Victoria Monument in England, the war memorial in Aberystwyth (one of whose figures having what Welsh historian Gwyn Williams described as "the finest backside in Cardiganshire", in his "The Land Remembers", Futura, London 1977^[1]), busts of Domenico Morelli and Giuseppe Maielli, and a bust of Edmondo De Amicis sited in Palermo's English Garden.

Notes

1. ^ The Finest Backside in Cardiganshire at www.aberdareblog.co.uk

Source

• This page is a translation of its Italian equivalent.